University of Iowa
Iowa Research Online
Theses and Dissertations
2009
The hip-hopsploitation film cycle: representing,
articulating, and appropriating hip-hop culture
Aaron Dickinson Sachs
University of Iowa
Copyright 2009 Aaron Dickinson Sachs
This dissertation is available at Iowa Research Online: http://ir.uiowa.edu/etd/591
Recommended Citation
Sachs, Aaron Dickinson. "The hip-hopsploitation film cycle: representing, articulating, and appropriating hip-hop culture." PhD
(Doctor of Philosophy) thesis, University of Iowa, 2009.
http://ir.uiowa.edu/etd/591.
Follow this and additional works at: http://ir.uiowa.edu/etd
Part of the Communication Commons
THE HIP-HOPSPLOITATION FILM CYCLE:
REPRESENTING, ARTICULATING, AND APPROPRIATING HIP-HOP CULTURE
by
Aaron Dickinson Sachs
An Abstract
Of a thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the
requirements for the Doctor of Philosophy degree
in Communication Studies in
the Graduate College of
The University of Iowa
May 2009
Thesis Supervisor: Associate Professor Kembrew McLeod
1
ABSTRACT
In this dissertation, I examine the articulation of hip-hop in the mid-1980s as it
emerged onto the national stage of American popular culture. Using Articulation Theory,
I weave together an argument explaining how and why hip-hop went from being
articulated as a set of multicultural and inclusive practices, organized around breaking,
graffiti, and DJing, to being articulated to a violent, misogynistic, and homophobic hypermasculine representation of blackness as essentially rap music culture. In doing so I also
argue that there are real political, social, racial, cultural, and ideological implications to
this shift in articulation; that something is at stake in defining hip-hop as both black and
rap music culture.
I put forward this argument by making three distinct steps over the course of this
dissertation. First, I identify a change in how hip-hop was represented and thus
articulated in popular media. Through an intertextual analysis of the hip-hopsploitation
genre films I show that early hip-hop was being represented primarily as a set of cultural
practices cohering around breaking, graffiti, and DJing rather than the now dominant
articulation as rap music culture.
Next I set forth one possible reason for this shift within the limiting conditions set
by the available media technologies and means of commodification. The visual nature of
hip-hop’s early articulation coupled with the economic inaccessibility of consumer home
video made breaking and graffiti difficult to commodify compared to rapping as an aural
element. Using “technological determinist” theorists like McLuhan, Innis, and Kittler, I
argue that understanding how hip-hop as been historically constructed requires analyzing
the limiting effect that the material conditions of media technologies have on the
production of hip-hop.
2
Finally, I offer a second, racial and cultural reason for this shift in articulation,
and begin identifying some of the significance of this shift. A key aspect of the
articulation of hip-hop as rap music is the further connection to blackness. This
connection may function to maintain white patriarchal hegemony by displacing it on the
black body via rap music: a complex dynamic of disidentification and appropriation.
Abstract Approved: _______________________________________________________
Thesis Supervisor
_______________________________________________________
Title and Department
_______________________________________________________
Date
THE HIP-HOPSPLOITATION FILM CYCLE:
REPRESENTING, ARTICULATING, AND APPROPRIATING HIP-HOP CULTURE
by
Aaron Dickinson Sachs
A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the
requirements for the Doctor of Philosophy degree
in Communication Studies in
the Graduate College of
The University of Iowa
May 2009
Thesis Supervisor: Associate Professor Kembrew McLeod
Copyright by
AARON DICKINSON SACHS
2009
All Rights Reserved
Graduate College
The University of Iowa
Iowa City, Iowa
CERTIFICATE OF APPROVAL
___________________________
PH.D. THESIS
_____________
This is to certify that the Ph.D. thesis of
Aaron Dickinson Sachs
has been approved by the Examining Committee for the thesis requirement
for the Doctor of Philosophy degree in Communication Studies at the May
2009 graduation.
Thesis Committee: ___________________________________________
Kembrew McLeod, Thesis Supervisor
___________________________________________
Aimee Carrillo-Rowe
___________________________________________
Murray Forman
___________________________________________
Tim Havens
___________________________________________
Vershawn Young
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I want to thank my family, friends, colleagues, mentors, teachers, and students,
both at the University of Iowa and beyond. I consider myself lucky to have found a rich
intellectual community in which to embed myself no matter where I’ve lived. Winters
and tornadoes aside, Iowa has treated me well, and I appreciate the patience it’s shown
this California boy. Of course this dissertation could not have been written without the
incredible help of many people, most notably my advisor Kembrew and committee
members Aimee, Murray, Tim and Vershawn. Materially speaking, this dissertation
would not have been possible without the generous support of the University of Iowa
Graduate College’s Seashore-Ballard Dissertation Fellowship, which allowed me to
dedicate the past year to fulltime work on the project.
I also want to send a shout out to Brian, Carson, Chucho, Dan, Dieter, Jesse, Josh,
Lindsey, Mike, Sam, and Tif, not to mention my moms, for putting up with and even
encouraging me during the development of this dissertation project. Your help, ranging
from long car rides rehashing my argument, to buying me some crucial hip-hop DVDs, to
simply your willingness to tirelessly (listen to me) talk about hip-hop, has been
invaluable. While there are many more names to thank than those above, there are also
some names that have been lost with time; it wouldn’t be right to exclude a big-ups to the
nameless co-worker of mine at the local video store who, during the summer of 2001,
first introduced me to the hip-hopsploitation films by playing Breakin’ 2: Electric
Boogaloo on the store video system. Thank you all!
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
LIST OF FIGURES .......................................................................................................... vii CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION ........................................................................................1 Project Overview ..............................................................................................1 Project Purpose and Context .....................................................................1 Overview of Approach and Strategy of Inquiry ........................................2 Project Value and Disciplinary Contribution ............................................6 Terminology ..............................................................................................7 Research Questions...........................................................................................8 Research Strategy ...........................................................................................10 Literature Review ...........................................................................................16 Hip-Hop In Film ......................................................................................17 Hip-Hop...................................................................................................22 Chapter Summaries.........................................................................................29 CHAPTER 2: REPRESENTING HIP-HOP IN FILM ......................................................33 Introduction.....................................................................................................33 Context: A Historical Preamble......................................................................35 Overview .................................................................................................36 Filmic Context .........................................................................................38 Hip-Hop in Film .............................................................................................40 Genre...............................................................................................................42 Pragmatic Genre Theory..........................................................................45 Articulated Genre Theory........................................................................48 The Hip-hopsploitation Films as Genre..........................................................50 The Relevance of Exploitation ................................................................52 The Exploitation Film Model ...........................................................53 The Function of Exploitation Films .................................................55 Delimiting Hip-hopsploitation.................................................................57 The Exploitation in Hip-hopsploitation............................................59 Connected Critical Discourse...........................................................62 The Hip-Hop in Hip-hopsploitation................................................................64 Hip-Hop as a Set of Cultural Practices....................................................65 Politics of Representation in Hip-Hop as a Set of Cultural
Practices ...........................................................................................67 Hip-Hop as Rap Music Culture ...............................................................70 Politics of Representation in Hip-Hop as Rap Music Culture .........70 Conclusion ......................................................................................................72 CHAPTER 3: AUTHENTICITY DISCOURSE AND THE POLITICS OF
REPRESENTATION .....................................................................................74 Introduction.....................................................................................................74 Backstory ........................................................................................................75 “Subculture” ...................................................................................................77 Representing Gender ......................................................................................79 iii
Tracy........................................................................................................81 Carmen ....................................................................................................83 Us Girls....................................................................................................86 Baby Love ...............................................................................................88 Race and Authenticity.....................................................................................91 Class and the Black Community.....................................................................99 Successes and Failures..................................................................................104 Conclusion ....................................................................................................109 CHAPTER 4: THE MEDIAL METAPHOR: HIP-HOP AS MEDIA.............................113 Introduction...................................................................................................113 Rationalizing Determinism....................................................................114 Hip-Hop History as a Narrative of Media Technology ................................115 Rhetorics of Progress and the “Technological Sublime” ......................116 Evolutionary Rhetoric ...........................................................................118 Hip-Hop as Media Technology ....................................................................121 Defining Media......................................................................................123 Culture as Media....................................................................................126 Hip-Hop as a Set of Cultural Practices .........................................................129 Hip-Hop and Orality..............................................................................129 Hip-Hop as an Oral Tradition................................................................136 Hip-Hop as Rap Music .................................................................................144 Rapping as Literate Culture...................................................................145 Rapping and Space ................................................................................147 Rapping and Empire ..............................................................................150 Conclusion ....................................................................................................154 CHAPTER 5: AUDIO KILLED THE VIDEO STAR ....................................................157 Introduction...................................................................................................157 Commodifying Culture.................................................................................158 Commercialism vs. Commodification...................................................160 Hot and Cool..........................................................................................162 Breaking .........................................................................................162 Graffiti ............................................................................................163 DJing ..............................................................................................163 Rapping (MCing) ...........................................................................164 Key Differences.....................................................................................165 Audio/Visual Technology.............................................................................166 Processing Hip-Hop...............................................................................168 Symbolic vs. Technological Hip-Hop ...................................................169 Data Processing ..............................................................................170 Processed Data ...............................................................................172 Capabilities for Data Processing: The 1980s Context....................173 Hip-hopsploitation.................................................................................173 Comparative Analysis of Home Audio and Video Hardware:
Technology ...................................................................................................175 Technological Requirements: Mechanical vs. Electronic .....................175 Autonomy.......................................................................................176 Complexity .....................................................................................177 Inter-Technological Competition ..........................................................179 Comparative Analysis of Home Audio and Video Software: Consumers ...180 Consumer Choice of Media Functionality: Playback, if only ...............180 iv
The Rise of the Audiocassette ........................................................182 Dual Functionality in Home Video ................................................183 The Quality of the Content ....................................................................184 Theatrical Releases in a Home Video Economy ............................185 Exploitation Fare ............................................................................186 Price, Accessibility, and Market Saturation ..........................................188 Snapshot of Home Audio in the 1980s: Data .................................188 Snapshot of Home Video in the 1980s: Data .................................190 Comparative Analysis of Data: Price and Home Penetration
Rates ...............................................................................................192 Conclusion ....................................................................................................193 CHAPTER 6: HIP-HOP, ARTICULATION, AND THE IDEOLOGY OF
RACIALIZATION .......................................................................................195 Introduction...................................................................................................195 Articulated Hip-Hop .....................................................................................196 Articulation Theory ...............................................................................198 Culture As Articulated...........................................................................200 The Articulation of Hip-Hop to Blackness...................................................203 Hip-Hop as Black ..................................................................................204 Racializing Historical Discourses: The Mysterious Case of the
Latino Elision .................................................................................205 Excurses: Hip-Hop and the One Drop Rule ...................................208 Theoretical and Political Justification ............................................213 Hip-Hop as Co-Constituted By Whiteness ...................................................217 Racial Appropriation .............................................................................220 Minstrelization: Black Culture as White Construct...............................226 The Significance of Hip-Hop as Minstrelsy .................................................229 Securing Hegemony Through Minstrelization ......................................230 The Whites in Hip-Hop’s Eyes..............................................................233 Conclusion ....................................................................................................235 CHAPTER 7: CONCLUSION ........................................................................................238 Implications of Research ..............................................................................243 Potential Limitations of Research.................................................................246 Suggestions for Future Direction of Research..............................................249 APPENDIX A: THE HIP-HOPSPLOITATION FILMS ................................................252 Wild Style .....................................................................................................252 Plot.........................................................................................................253 Reception...............................................................................................254 Style Wars.....................................................................................................256 Plot.........................................................................................................257 Reception...............................................................................................258 Breakin’ ........................................................................................................258 Plot.........................................................................................................260 Reception...............................................................................................261 Beat Street.....................................................................................................263 Plot.........................................................................................................264 Reception...............................................................................................265 Breakin’ 2: Electric Boogaloo ......................................................................265 v
Plot.........................................................................................................266 Reception...............................................................................................267 Body Rock ....................................................................................................269 Plot.........................................................................................................270 Reception...............................................................................................271 Rappin’ .........................................................................................................272 Plot.........................................................................................................273 Reception...............................................................................................273 Krush Groove................................................................................................274 Plot.........................................................................................................275 Reception...............................................................................................276 Delivery Boys ...............................................................................................277 Plot.........................................................................................................277 Reception...............................................................................................278 Fast Forward .................................................................................................278 Plot.........................................................................................................279 Reception...............................................................................................280 Turk 182........................................................................................................281 Plot.........................................................................................................281 Reception...............................................................................................282 APPENDIX B: “BEAT STREET BREAKDOWN” .......................................................284 Beat Street Breakdown (Film Version) ........................................................284 Beat Street Breakdown (Album Version).....................................................287 APPENDIX C: THE EMERGENCE OF HOME AUDIO AND VIDEO.......................290 Historical Overview: Home Audio...............................................................290 Record Players.......................................................................................290 Radio......................................................................................................291 Audiotape and CD .................................................................................292 Historical Overview: Home Video ...............................................................292 Film and Television...............................................................................292 Magnetic Tape .......................................................................................293 Video Tape/Cassette Recorders (VTR/VCR)........................................294 Inter-Technological Competition: The Format Wars ...................................294 Cylinder vs. Disc Records .....................................................................295 LP Vs. 45 ...............................................................................................296 VHS Vs. Betamax .................................................................................297 VCRs vs. Video Discs ...........................................................................298 BIBLIOGRAPHY............................................................................................................300 vi
LIST OF FIGURES
Figure 1: Timeline of Hip-Hop History .............................................................................37 Figure 2: Kittlerian Matrix...............................................................................................168 Figure 3: Average Price of Audio Content by Format.....................................................189 Figure 4: Number of Units Sold by Format (millions). ...................................................189 Figure 5: Growth of U.S. Home Video, 1978-1992 ........................................................191 Figure 6: Estimated Average Retail Prices (retail value/#units shipped) ........................192 Figure 7: Penetration Rates of Consumer Electronics .....................................................193 vii
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CHAPTER 1:
INTRODUCTION
Project Overview
Though hip-hop is the second most popular form of music in the U.S. and is
increasingly influential around the globe, it remains understudied in academia. This
oversight is especially unfortunate given its potential to provide insights into race, class,
gender, and sexuality. What literature does exist is limited in scope, charting hip-hop’s
history, discussing it as a movement, and probing the “curious phenomenon” of white
suburban fandom. All are important for describing hip-hop and facilitating a greater
understanding of the culture for those outside it, but these texts leave much socio-cultural
and critical potential untapped, and are insufficient to sustain the emerging subfield of
hip-hop studies. While a growing body of work moves past description to theorize and
critique hip-hop, these studies remain based upon a narrow, descriptive understanding of
what hip-hop is, thereby limiting the advancement of hip-hop scholarship.
Project Purpose and Context
In contrast, this dissertation questions the core assumptions underlying this
previous research; chief among them that “hip-hop” is itself an uncontested and stable
term. My goals are to make a critical intervention in current hip-hop studies by reevaluating how hip-hop is constructed, and analyzing the possibilities and practices that
are privileged when hip-hop is defined as African-American culture. To accomplish this,
my project will map how hip-hop was articulated by a set of media texts—the hiphopsploitation films—as hip-hop first began to transition from a Bronx subculture to an
international phenomenon. By examining how these articulated hip-hop, my intent is to
interrogate the relations of power embedded within hip-hop’s prevailing definition as rap
music culture.
2
The purpose of calling into question the definition of hip-hop as black popular
culture is not to attempt a new kind of racial and cultural appropriation or colonization.
Instead, my aim is to examine what is at stake in making this connection: why is hip-hop
defined as black, who benefits from this definition and how? The bulk of previous
scholarship on hip-hop, as I discuss in more detail in the literature review below, argues
that hip-hop is a form of resistant culture that empowers African-Americans, especially
inner-city black youth. The purpose of questioning the connection of hip-hop to
blackness is not to refute these arguments but rather to complicate them by seeing how
hip-hop may in some ways empower dominant ideology. By charting the changing
articulation of hip-hop, my aim is to denormalize the prevailing definition of hip-hop as
rap music culture, showing in the process that the connection of hip-hop to blackness has
also tended to link both to a string of problematic socio-cultural and political signifiers
like misogyny, homophobia, hyper-masculinity, violence, and hyper-capitalism.
Delinking these signifiers, particularly the connection of hip-hop to blackness, highlights
the way that these connections are not the neutral products of historical or cultural
evolution, but of ideological forces. Again, the purpose is not to argue that hip-hop is not
black, or alternately to say that hip-hop is beyond race entirely, but to argue that this
linking of hip-hop to blackness is partially a result of ideology. In doing so, I hope to
make possible a deeper and more complete examination of the way that power, race,
gender, and many other axes of identity and differentiation come together within hip-hop.
Overview of Approach and Strategy of Inquiry
While I draw on many specific methodologies within individual chapters, I rely
most heavily on Articulation Theory to frame the dissertation. Articulation Theory
examines social, cultural, and political forms, focusing on the constellation of linkages—
and their significance—that are made in the process of creating that form into a
seemingly coherent unity. Here I’m using British cultural theorist Stuart Hall’s definition
of articulation to mean both (1) an utterance, expression, or representation, as well as (2)
3
a connection of distinct parts or a conceptual linkage that makes a unity out of two or
more cultural elements. Like sampling and DJing, the two dominant modes of hip-hop
musical production, articulation is about joining together multiple pieces to create
something new, making it particularly appropriate for my project.
Using articulation theory as part of an analysis allows me to take two approaches
to studying how hip-hop is constituted. First, I can examine the way that hip-hop is
understood as being comprised of different elements—traditionally Graffiti, Breaking,
DJing, and MCing. For my project, this also means analyzing the attendant axes of
identity that have been connected to hip-hop through rap music: hyper-masculinity,
misogyny, homophobia, violence, and most importantly, blackness. Second, articulation
theory illuminates the way that various representations of and within hip-hop are
constructed through a process linked to ideology. Furthermore, it makes clear that this
connection is both non-necessary and inscribed with power. Stuart Hall writes, “ . . .
articulation is both a way of understanding how ideological elements come, under certain
conditions, to cohere together within a discourse, and a way of asking how they do or do
not become articulated, at specific conjunctures, to certain political subjects” (Hall in
Grossberg "On Postmodernism and Articulation: An Interview with Stuart Hall" 141-42).
With articulation theory in mind, I anchor my study with a small group of mid1980s films called “hip-hopsploitation,” a genre that I define in relation to earlier
exploitation genres such as blaxploitation. I use hip-hopsploitation to show how hip-hop
was being articulated as it first began to transition from a Bronx, New York specific
subculture, to a national and international phenomenon. Through an intertextual analysis
of the films, their press coverage, and the discourse circulating about hip-hop more
generally, I map the way that early hip-hop was being represented primarily through
breaking, graffiti, and party-DJing. Of the eleven films, only two place MCing/rapping
as central, while eight privilege breaking and/or graffiti, and one highlights breaking,
graffiti, and DJing.
4
These films also represent one of the first times that hip-hop was being
commercially appropriated for mainstream consumption. In other words, hip-hop was
becoming popular culture. One of the assumptions under-girding most economic
analyses of commercial hip-hop is that the majority of its purchasers are white.
Regardless of whether this assumption is true, it is one of the primary rationales for the
current paradigm in hip-hop marketing. Achieving mainstream or “cross-over” success
requires selling to the largest audience possible, which, in the US, is generally
characterized as white. Part of what makes the “hip-hopsploitation” films interesting is
that they failed in this regard; they were not particularly successful with a mainstream
audience. In failing, the hip-hopsploitation films foreclosed on the dominance of an
articulation of hip-hop connecting it to breaking and graffiti, two of the most diverse
elements of hip-hop along race, gender, and class lines. I demonstrate this through a
close reading of representations of gender, race, and class within Beat Street (1984),
highlighting how the contested nature of these representations ultimately point to an
articulation of hip-hop that is less rigidly defined in contrast to the dominant depictions of
hyper-masculine, misogynistic, homophobic, violent blackness now associated with hiphop culture.
With the failure of hip-hopsploitation films, hip-hop is rearticulated with MCing
and DJing in the form of “rap music.” More precisely, the soon to be labeled “gangsta
rap” becomes the dominant representation of hip-hop, articulating it with a capitalist and
violent misogynistic form of black (hyper)-masculinity. I locate a reason for the
transition from a breaking- and graffiti-centric hip-hop to “gangsta rap” within a
structuralist reading of the political economy of available media technologies as well as a
cultural studies reading of the social and racial politics of representation. First, I argue
that the visual nature of hip-hop’s early articulation coupled with the economic
inaccessibility of consumer home video made breaking and graffiti difficult to
commodify. As aural elements, MCing and DJing were commodified more easily given
5
the wide accessibility of consumer home audio. In making this argument I mobilize
theorists of the social consequences of technology like McLuhan, Innis, Kittler, and
Carey. In short, I argue that understanding how hip-hop has been historically constructed
requires analyzing the material conditions of media technology and the limitations these
conditions have for the production of hip-hop.
Following my focus on the material impact of media technology, I move to
examine the American socio-cultural pressures that were also functioning to rearticulate
hip-hop in the mid-1980s. I begin by calling into question the basic assumption that hiphop is an “authentic” manifestation of black popular culture, arguing that there is in fact
no-necessary connection between hip-hop and “blackness.” Rather, what connects
“blackness” and “hip-hop” has been the need for hip-hop to be perceived as
“authentically” black so it could be sold to its (assumed white) mass audience. I argue
that the racial politics of cultural appropriation essentially required hip-hop to perform a
violent hyper-masculine “blackness” for it to be consumed by whites as a kind of neoblackface minstrelsy. This line of inquiry moves my study beyond established narratives
of hip-hop studies, but in doing so, it also opens new ground for exploring and
interrogating the role of white racist desire in hip-hop culture. In doing this, I treat the
articulation of hip-hop to blackness, hyper-masculinity, homophobia, violence, and
misogyny via rap music as symptomatic of its white consumers instead of a necessary
evolution of authentic black culture.
Essentially, I begin to conduct a reverse ethnography or engineering of whiteness
via the representations of blackness within this articulation of hip-hop as rap music
culture. The results are not only a sketch of whiteness in the mid-1980s, but also the
otherwise obscured influence of whiteness on hip-hop. Put differently, by showing that
there is no necessary correspondence between hip-hop and blackness, my use of
articulation theory reveals that the further connection of both to the list of problematic
socio-cultural signifiers listed above is also non-necessary. The argument in this chapter
6
is thus not to say that hip-hop is necessarily not black, or that it is beyond race, but that
the articulation of all these socio-cultural and political positions within hip-hop, including
blackness, is the result of ideology—in particular, a form of ideology that benefits the
white, patriarchal, hyper-capitalist hegemony. In making this argument I draw on works
about blackface minstrelsy, the “one-drop-rule,” racial performance and authenticity, and
work on the white appropriation of black culture.
Project Value and Disciplinary Contribution
Looking at hip-hop through Articulation Theory helps me interrogate the taken
for granted understanding of hip-hop in popular culture and academia. It reveal that hiphop’s configuration is not only dependent on technological possibilities, but partly the
product of specific and concrete social conditions—in this case a white racist fantasy of
blackness that also empowers particular practices by the whites that consume it. Thus my
project is not about hip-hop and “blackness” per se, but about seeing the articulation of
hip-hop as partly a product of whiteness and a historical white racist desire to consume
black bodies. I am not looking at whether hip-hop is or isn't actually a black musical and
cultural form, and what it does or doesn't say about blackness. Instead I question the idea
of hip-hop as essentially an expression of black culture because doing so creates space to
examine why hip-hop is articulated with blackness—particularly with black
masculinity—and at what cost. These are questions I believe have been largely glossed
over within studies of hip-hop up to this point.
In probing the shifting articulation of hip-hop through the hip-hopsploitation
films—the structural, technological, racial, and cultural reasons for the re-articulation of
hip-hop in the form of gangsta rap—my project contributes to the fields of hip-hop,
whiteness, film and media studies, while also entering into dialogues with other
disciplines like American Studies. I further contribute to these fields by opening up a
space to question the political, social, and cultural significance of linking hip-hop with a
7
variety of axes of identity—most specifically with black hyper-masculinity. I see this as a
valuable and necessary addition to hip-hop studies if it is to continue to develop as a
scholarship that remains relevant within both academia and the hip-hop community itself;
hip-hop studies must examine the relations of power and ideology embedded in hip-hop.
Finally, I hope to begin laying the groundwork for a future re-theorization of hip-hop that
replaces an essentialist and reductionist definition of hip-hop through race with one that
recognizes the complexity of intersecting social, political, economic, cultural, historical,
and ideological forces that work to continually (re)articulate hip-hop.
Terminology
Before continuing, it’s necessary to clarify several points of terminology as they
are used within this dissertation. First, in speaking of hip-hop, I am speaking not of any
actual or real piece of culture, but of the discursively created form of culture that we call
hip-hop. I use this as a larger umbrella term to describe the culture as a whole, or the
particular articulation of culture that seems to make up the culture as a whole. I also
frequently refer to the four constitutive elements of hip-hop: breaking, graffiti, DJing, and
MCing. Breaking, more commonly known as breakdancing by those outside the hip-hop
community and as b-boying within it, is the dance component of hip-hop culture. Graffiti
is aerosol “spray paint” art painted on public property. In relation to hip-hop, graffiti
most often refers to such art as it adorns NY subway trains, however it can also be found
on neighborhood walls, bridges, street signs, and a host of other places. DJing is the form
of hip-hop production marked by the manipulation of records (most traditionally, though
now it also includes CDs or mp3s as well) on two or more turntables linked by a mixer.
The DJ cuts or mixes the two records, often along with samples from drum-machines or
samplers, into a song. MCing is most often referred to as rapping, where an MC or
rapper rhythmically recites rhymed verses over a beat (whether provided by a DJ, beat
box, or other source).
8
For the sake of clarity, within the dissertation I tend to use rap/rapping to refer to
a later phase of MCing that had subsumed DJing as its subordinated musical
accompaniment. Since this form of DJing was an integral, but now dependent and nearly
indistinguishable part of MCing, I choose to simply use the term DJing in reference to
DJings earlier, independent and party oriented form. Of course this earlier form of DJing
also included MCs who worked as hype men for the DJ, but the DJ remained the primary
figure. Thus my use of rap/rapping should be read as referring to the later-stage form of
MCing that included a subordinated DJing, while DJing (or party-DJing) should be read
as referring to the earlier form of more independent DJing that may have included one or
more complimentary MCs.
Research Questions
My project is framed by a set of research questions, the most basic of which is the
question: why is hip-hop almost exclusively defined within the mainstream as rap music
when evidence exists that this has not always been the case? In other words, how is it
that hip-hop was incorporated or “domesticated”? How did it go from being articulated as
a subculture of partying and often politically resistant expression—a set of practices
organized around breaking, graffiti, and DJing—to being articulated as rap music culture
and a major source of representations of a violent and misogynistic black masculinity?
Answering this entails looking at the way that “gangsta rap” became the dominant
articulation of hip-hop (i.e. how it’s currently depicted in mainstream culture), replacing
an earlier, more utopian, party oriented or politically revolutionary articulation that
foregrounded hip-hop as a means of expression—primarily through breaking, graffiti, and
DJing—for youth from the decaying inner city (i.e. what’s seen in the hip-hopsploitation
films).
There are already a number of histories of hip-hop, the most relevant of which are
covered in the literature review that follows, and this dissertation is not meant to simply
be a history. A text like Jeff Chang’s Can’t Stop Won’t Stop, while amazingly
9
historically comprehensive, isn’t interpretive enough to get at the questions underlying
my project. It doesn’t detail how hip-hop went from the Bronx to the world stage, or how
the articulation of hip-hop has evolved. Even more importantly, it doesn’t address what
the significance of this shift may be. Put differently, it doesn’t tell us what is at stake in
defining hip-hop as rap music, and through this, the misogynistic, homophobic, hypercapitalist, violent, and hyper-masculine black culture that is articulated to it.
In the first half of my dissertation, I look at what articulations are at work in these
films as a genre/group in terms of hip-hop and its relationship to issues of gender and
race, as well as to some degree class and sexuality. One of the reasons for grounding
this project more heavily in these films as texts is in order to avoid the already worn path
of more general discussions of hip hop as well as its appropriation; there are plenty of
historical discussion of hip-hop in addition to critiques of the way that it has been taken
up by suburban white kids, exploited black people, and commodified black masculinity.
Further, doing so allows me to reconstruct how hip-hop was articulated at this specific
time in its history, giving me a historically specific and tangible point of reference to then
discuss how that articulation shifted. In some ways, my project is similar to those of
Lynn Spigel and Eric Lott: it seeks to look at the way a certain cultural artifact—
television and blackface minstrelsy in their respective cases—is received during a
historical period. In my case, I want to begin by mapping the way that the articulation of
hip-hop changes over the course of the hip-hopsploitation film cycle. It’s important to
ground my project in examining the discourse created about hip-hop by these films and
by their reception in the press at this particular historical moment for two reasons. First,
it coincides with the incorporation and appropriation of hip-hop by mainstream media
and society. Second, and more importantly, doing so calls into question the dominant
historical narrative of hip-hop, potentially laying bare the relations of power embedded in
both the history itself and the resulting paradigm within which hip-hop currently
operates.
10
This raises a final question; what was hip-hop articulated with during the hiphopsploitation years, and what is the significance of the re-articulation that occurred,
especially as it relates to relations of power and the incorporation of hip-hop into
mainstream culture? As many cultural theorists have noted there are always
contradictions in the way that this process of articulation works. It’s important for my
project to look at how it is that hip-hop could be articulated in these films as multicultural and inclusive of women, even going so far as to include a gay man in one of the
films (Breakin’), when it is now so completely articulated to a string of signifiers like
misogyny, homophobia and almost-exclusive blackness.
These contradictory articulations—as both social and cultural history—form the
basis of my project and will hopefully shed light on the significance of hip-hop’s
representation, articulation, and appropriation. To summarize my research questions, I
want to know why and how hip-hop went from being articulated as a set of multi-cultural
and inclusive practices organized around breaking, graffiti, and party-DJing, to being
articulated to a problematic string of signifiers (e.g. violent, misogynistic and
homophobic hyper-masculine blackness) as essentially rap music culture, as well as what
are the political, social, racial, cultural, and ideological implications of this change; I
want to know what is at stake in defining hip-hop as African-American popular/rap music
culture?
Research Strategy
As briefly discussed above, my project relies on articulation theory to make my
overarching argument. More generally speaking, my research adopts a model of Cultural
Studies that is particularly committed to examining relations of power, and through that,
issues of gender, race, sexuality, and class. This theoretical paradigm overlaps with what
Valerie Smith calls, “theorizing black feminisms” or bell hooks calls, “the oppositional
gaze.” Both of these are useful because they suggest that this is a process or negotiation
with a number of intersecting positionalities rather than one fixed position. First, this
11
highlights the importance of seeing scholarship as dynamic, as a process. To put it in the
words of Stuart Hall, “I am not interested in Theory, I am interested in going on
theorizing” (Hall in Grossberg "On Postmodernism and Articulation: An Interview with
Stuart Hall" 150). Second, it stresses the multiplicity of different vectors, some of which
are contradictory, that all must be considered as much as possible during analysis.
1
According to Denzin and Lincoln, the would-be researcher begins by considering
two basic questions: what will the “research design” and the “choice of strategy of
inquiry” be for the project (375)? These questions are meant primarily to connect a
researcher’s theoretical paradigm with his or her methods of collecting and analyzing
materials. In considering the first question, Denzin and Lincoln write, “a research design
situates the researcher in the empirical world and connects him or her to specific sites,
persons, groups, institutions, and bodies of relevant interpretive material, including
documents, and archives” (Denzin and Lincoln 25). This network of relationships is
important because it begins to outline how the researcher is going to deal with something
like “representation and legitimation” (Denzin and Lincoln 25). A strategy of inquiry
adds to this by indicating what methodologies are available to the researcher. According
to Denzin and Lincoln, “a strategy of inquiry comprises a bundle of skills, assumptions,
and practices that the researcher employs as he or she moves from paradigm to empirical
world” (Denzin and Lincoln 25). On one level, my research strategy in this dissertation
could be described as “the case study,” in that I am choosing to study a specific set of
1
In Denzin and Lincoln’s introduction to their third edition of The Sage Handbook of
Qualitative Research, they write that, “the gendered, multiculturally situated researcher
approaches the world with a set of ideas, a framework (theory, ontology) that he or she
then examines in specific ways (methodology, analysis)” (21). Expressing this in more
formal terms, they outline five phases of the research process: The Researcher as a
Multicultural Subject, Theoretical Paradigms and Perspectives, Research Strategies,
Methods of Collection and Analysis, and The Art, Practice, and Politics of Interpretive
Evaluation (23). While certainly not the only way to envision this process, theirs offers
me a useful starting place for envisioning how my dissertation project will proceed. The
most important of these, for my purposes, seems to be the middle three.
12
objects that will then be used to make larger claims. However a more accurate, and
perhaps instructive, way of looking at my strategy of inquiry is as bricolage.
Though it is not included specifically as a strategy of inquiry in Denzin and
Lincoln, they rely on a conception of the researcher-as-bricoleur very heavily in the
introduction. As they write, “the qualitative researcher as bricoleur, or maker of quilts,
uses the aesthetic and material tools of his or her craft, deploying whatever strategies,
methods, and empirical materials are at hand” (Denzin and Lincoln 24). As a researcher
working in a more or less Cultural Studies paradigm, bricolage seems appropriate for this
project because it suggests a lack of fixity. Put differently, bricolage implies a theorizing
that is flexible enough to avoid the pitfalls of bias often inherent with the calcification of
a research strategy and, through that, a method of analysis. Hall addresses this aspect of
cultural studies specifically when he writes that, “as a strategy, [this] means holding
enough ground to be able to think a position but always putting it in a way which has a
horizon toward open-ended theorization. Maintaining that is absolutely essential for
cultural studies, at least if it is to remain a critical and deconstructive project . . .” (Hall in
Grossberg "On Postmodernism and Articulation: An Interview with Stuart Hall" 150).
Since the researcher as bricoleur allows for this kind of open-ended choosing of relevant
strategies and methods, it fits well with the cultural studies paradigm within which I
work.
This also seems particularly fitting for my project. Denzin and Lincoln write that
bricolage could alternately be thought of as quilt making or filmic montage. I’d like to
suggest that it also be thought of as sampling—a form of sound collage—or, to locate it
2
even more explicitly within hip-hop, as DJing . Similar to producing a good musical
track where the DJ/producer borrows bits and pieces from different artists, a good
2
The hip-hop DJ creates the beat or “track” over which the MC raps, by finding samples
or “breaks” in records that can be looped and layered on top of each other.
13
dissertation borrows from different theorists and methodologies. DJing-as-bricolage
creates “the sense that images, sounds, and understanding are blending together,
overlapping, forming a composite, a new creation” (Denzin and Lincoln 4). This dialogic
and interdisciplinary strategy of inquiry has allowed me to use the methodologies that
seem most fruitful for illuminating a text or object. I offer this conceit merely to stress
the way that bricolage is not only applicable to the study of hip-hop, but is also already
included as hip-hop. This returns me to a simplified version of one of my primary
research questions; that is, what is (or what counts as) hip-hop?
3
Articulation, too, can be thought of as sampling. Again, I turn to Stuart Hall to
discuss the meaning of articulation: “the term has a nice double meaning because
‘articulate’ means to utter, to speak forth, to be articulate. It carries that sense of
language-ing, of expressing, etc . . .. An articulation is [also] the form of the connection
that can make a unity of two different elements, under certain conditions. It is a linkage
which is not necessary, determined, absolute and essential for all time . . .” (Hall in
Grossberg "On Postmodernism and Articulation: An Interview with Stuart Hall" 141).
Like bricolage, sampling, and DJing, articulation is about joining together multiple pieces
to create something new. I particularly like thinking about articulation in terms of the
joining together of “different elements” since, at one level, hip-hop has historically been
represented as the literal joining together of four elements to form one cultural
movement.
To think about hip-hop in terms of articulation puts me in the position of
examining the way that hip-hop is understood of as being comprised of graffiti, breaking,
DJing, and MCing. It also illuminates the way that various representations of and within
hip-hop are constructed through a process linked to ideology. It’s worth repeating the
earlier quote of Stuart Hall when he writes, “ . . . articulation is both a way of
3
Another way of asking why hip-hop has been articulated in the way that it has.
14
understanding how ideological elements come, under certain conditions, to cohere
together within a discourse, and a way of asking how they do or do not become
articulated, at specific conjunctures, to certain political subjects” (Hall in Grossberg "On
Postmodernism and Articulation: An Interview with Stuart Hall" 141-42). The very title
of Jennifer Daryl Slack’s influential paper on the subject states that articulation is both a
theory and a method. The above quote, however, suggests that alternatively, and
certainly more consistently with my discussion of the research process thus far, we can
think of articulation as being more closely resembling a strategy of inquiry than a
methodology.
Still, as a strategy of inquiry, Slack’s formulation of articulation, while initially
developed as a means of discussing technology, is well suited to helping me answer some
of the key questions posed in the previous section of this introduction; For example, why
is it that the “hip-hop” articulated by and through the hip-hopsploitation films is so
different from the way hip-hop is articulated now? Slack gets at this relationship between
various articulations when she writes, “power not only draws and redraws the
connections among the disparate elements within which identities are designated, but in
the process, power designates certain of these articulations as dominant and others as
subordinate” (Slack "Contextualizing Technologies" 333). She goes on to argue that,
“the more powerful the articulations by which we live, the more closed off we become to
alternative practices and possibilities as well as to the very critical faculty that allows us
to know that we are living out social choices, not necessities” (Slack "Contextualizing
Technologies" 335). Since my goal is largely to map this interplay between different,
competing, articulations of hip-hop, using the hip-hopsploitation film cycle and the
discourse about it in the press, this seems like an ideal strategy of inquiry for my project.
In many ways, Foucault’s inquiry strategies of “archaeology” and “genealogy”
are similar to articulation in the way that they provide a lens for the mapping of how
society comes to normalize the particular formulation of a concept or practice.
15
Furthermore, Foucault’s emphasis on “historical” research makes his work well suited to
my project. As C. G. Prado explains, “Shored up by meticulous empirical research,
Foucault’s basic strategy in both archaeology and genealogy is to retell the history of a
discipline, institution, or practice in order to explain these ‘epistemic shifts,’ the changes
from one paradigm of knowledge to another. He highlights and connects previously
marginal and obscured elements and events, thereby presenting a very different picture of
that discipline, institution, or practice” (Prado 25). In other words, the strategy is to
explore how a particular idea or practice becomes naturalized, thus becoming history,
while others fall by the wayside.
Given that archaeological analysis is most concerned with the way that discourse
shapes practice, and genealogy is concerned with the way that discourse and practice
shape one another (Prado 24), the later seems to be the better fit for the purposes of my
project. Prado writes:
Foucault’s account of genealogy is redescription of traditional history and renders
it problematic by highlighting discontinuities that traditional history glosses over.
There are two aspects to Foucault’s redescriptive history. One is the offering of
genealogy or ‘effective history’ as an alternative construal of doing history. The
other is offering detailed alternatives to particular historical accounts. (Prado 45)
Since my goal with this project is to examine the shift from one articulation of hip-hop to
another—the way that one historical narrative of hip-hop, its traditional history linking it
to rap music, has become articulated as the only way of understanding hip-hop—my
strategy of inquiry must then also include the intention to intervene in and redescribe the
history of hip-hop. While genealogy offers me with a fruitful strategy of inquiry, a way
of potentially describing this epistemic shift from one articulation of hip-hop to the other,
its importance for my project remains secondary to articulation. That is to say that
16
Foucault’s work will no doubt greatly influence the analyses in my project, but it will
4
likely not reach the level of being an explicitly applied strategy of inquiry in it.
To reiterate an earlier point, while articulation theory is the primary strategy of
inquiry I use to make my overarching claim, in the course of making my argument within
individual chapters I “sample” and “mix” many other methodologies, approaches, and
strategies of inquiry in the vein of a researcher as bricoleur/DJ. Explanations of each
approach are addressed as they are employed, as is relevant theoretical literature. While
this introduction to articulation theory is sufficient for the majority of the dissertation,
Chapter 6 relies on a more sustained and deeper theoretical engagement with articulation,
and as such, contains a more detailed and nuanced discussion of articulation theory.
Literature Review
Texts that focus on hip-hop, whether scholarly or popular, largely leave the hiphopsploitation films out of their discussions, often dismissing them on the rare occasions
that they are included. This begs the question; why are these films excluded from the
canon of hip-hop? In other words, why don’t these films count as hip-hop? These
questions are simply another way of expressing my dissertation’s concern with
examining the articulation of hip-hop and how it changed during the mid-1980s as it was
launched into mainstream American culture. As such, texts that frame hip-hop
historically or seek to grapple with how to define it form the foundation of my work.
While still an emerging field within the study of culture, hip-hop studies has nevertheless
seen a significant number of publications within the last two decades. While I envision
that my project will contribute to several fields, I am primarily concerned with entering
into the scholarly discourses within hip-hop studies. As a result, this literature review
foregoes more theoretically oriented works to focus on texts that explicitly address hip4
One might alternately say that articulation theory already includes a Foucauldian
genealogical approach within it, but making such a claim definitively may require a
dissertation in itself.
17
hop in film, as well as more general literature on hip-hop. This is also intended to frame
the overarching discussion of hip-hop within this dissertation. As noted above, where
necessary, more specific treatments of relevant literature and theory are included within
individual chapters.
Hip-Hop In Film
One of the most comprehensive accounts of hip-hop in film is Melvin Donalson’s
Hip-hop in American Cinema. On the one hand, he is fairly exhaustive in his discussion
of almost every film related to hip-hop, including all eleven of the films I discuss in this
dissertation. He also does an excellent job of synthesizing a significant portion of the
press coverage, though he seems to focus primarily on mainstream and film industry
sources. On the other hand, his text is primarily a survey and as such, is somewhat
limited in scope. It describes the films and to some degree their receptions in the press,
but it does not push much beyond that to interpret or offer a critique; there is no
discussion of what significance there might be in discussing hip-hop in film. Despite this
critical or interpretive limitation, Donalson’s text does contain several important points
relevant to my discussion of the hip-hopsploitation films. As discusses in later chapters,
in placing the films within a larger context of hip-hop’s history, Donalson acknowledges
the non-necessary correspondence of hip-hop’s dominant articulation to rap music culture
and blackness. He does this by discussing the way that “although a convincing argument
could be made that ‘rap’ has its origins and development within black culture, hip hop
expressions have been shaped by various racial, ethnic, and cultural contributors”
(Donalson 3). Embedded in this statement are two important points. First, he identifies
that there is an articulation centered on rap music and another centered on hip-hop’s
elements or “expressions” like breaking, graffiti, and DJing. Second, he connects
blackness to rap music while acknowledging the more multicultural influence of hip-hop
as a whole.
18
What’s more, in addition to identifying the articulated nature of hip-hop, he
begins to describe the way the hip-hopsploitation represents hip-hop as part of this
process of articulation. Donalson echoes my claim that the early hip-hopsploitation films
tended to focus on breaking, graffiti, and party-DJing, as well as a more multi-cultural
and inclusive version of hip-hop, while later hip-hop films—including two of the hiphopsploitation films towards the end of the genre—tended to focus on rap music and
more restrictively define hip-hop culture as black. Despite remaining largely descriptive
in his account of hip-hop in film, especially in relation to the hip-hopsploitation films I
am interested in analyzing as part of this dissertation, this book marks an important step
towards examining the role the hip-hopsploitation films have in hip-hop history. Because
of the way Donalson’s text begins to address some of the research questions that initially
brought me to this project—namely my initial interest as to why these films were
excluded—if not any of the primary ones that now inform it, I feel obliged to mention
that this book was released only after this project was already underway. It’s possible
that had it been released earlier, I would have designed aspects of my dissertation
differently. Still, rather than view this as a limitation, or see the similarities and overlap
of his text with parts of my own as competition, I see his work as corroboration.
Other, earlier texts on hip-hop in film, unfortunately, tend to ignore the hiphopsploitation films. In Representing Hip-Hop Culture and the Production of Black
Cinema, film scholar S. Craig Watkins attempts to show how hip-hop and black youth
culture can be examined through film. The main thrust of his book seems to revolve
around the way in which the films of the late-80s and 90s simultaneously marginalized
and hyper-visualized black youth (Weheliye 293). While the title suggests a look at hiphop in African-American film, Watkins largely limits his examination to the above time
period. In his introduction, he indicates that limiting his analysis was a matter of
choosing depth over breadth, and he acknowledges the importance of “teen pictures”
(Watkins Representing 7).
19
Nevertheless, he still fails to include the films in providing context for his
analysis. His overview of African-American film history includes only one mention of
the time period in which these hip-hopsploitation films were made; “between 1975 and
1985 the theatrical release of films by African Americans, or films featuring African
Americans in significant roles, averaged fewer than two a year” (Rhines as quoted in
Watkins Representing 96). It’s surprising to find that Watkins overlooks the body of
films discussed in this dissertation. For one thing, it’s made up of eleven films, nine of
which were made within a two-year period, making his assertion of fewer than two a year
5
doubtful. For another, his thesis is largely about the exploitation of black youth culture,
one of the defining qualities of the hip-hopsploitation genre. When Watkins does
mention one of the films, Krush Groove, in his text—Beat Street and Breakin’ are both
mentioned in the accompanying note—he undercuts his choice to exclude the films by
6
highlighting the way in which they set up the success of the films he does analyze. In
other words, he indicates their relevance to his analysis, yet still fails to include them.
Perhaps more significant for my purposes, however, is the way that his very thesis seems
to be articulating hip-hop to blackness. This may also explain why he fails to account for
the hip-hopsploitation films since, as will be discussed more in the next chapter, the hiphopsploitation films tended to portray hip-hop as more multicultural and multi-ethnic
rather than simply as black culture.
5
An alternate interpretation is that he doesn’t equate hip-hop and blackness, though he
seems to do so in most of the book, or that he does not consider these films to be hip-hop.
6
Watkins writes; “The production, marketing, distribution, and consumption of these
early films, however, vividly illustrate how rap and its market greatly expanded between
the eighties and nineties. Take, for example, Warner Brother’s rap musical Krush
Groove (1985). Similar to many of the nineties hip hop-inflected films, Krush Groove
not only emphasized rap music but also employed rappers as the principal actors. In the
mid-1980s, rap’s market was primarily young black urban teenagers. The
release/exhibition pattern for Krush Groove further illustrates that the film industry’s
attempt to take advantage of the emergent youth [read as hip-hop] culture targeted a
modest, predominantly African American market” (194).
20
A second, very similar text, Post-Soul Black Cinema: Discontinuities,
Innovations, and Breakpoints, 1970-1995 by William R. Grant, IV, also largely excludes
the group of films while simultaneously asserting the articulation of hip-hop to blackness.
Like Watkins, Grant moves to dismiss the films in his introduction in order to legitimate
his focus on Spike Lee and blaxploitation, writing, “Breakin’ (Cannon, 1984), Rappin’
(Cannon, 1985) and other films with a supposed urban sensibility typically failed
miserably in their attempts to portray the ‘hood’ in accurate or culturally authentic terms,
because they were nothing more than exploitative attempts by Hollywood to make a
quick dollar” (Grant 4). Grant only specifically names those films that are more arguably
exploitative, leaving out films like Beat Street where such a claim is more contested. His
choice to name only these two films must be seen as purposeful, rather then out of
ignorance, since at the end of his chapter on blaxploitation, he names more of the films.
However, in doings so he is again dismissive of their importance, calling them “feeble
inept attempts to take advantage of the hip hop fan by making poorly conceived films [. .
. that] disappeared at the box-office almost as quickly as they were released” (Grant 48).
The work of both Grant and Watkins—who have remarkably similar research foci, Spike
Lee and blaxploitation and Spike Lee and the ghetto action film cycle (or neoblaxploitation) respectively—and their relative dismissal of the hip-hopsploitation film
leave me with a fertile genre to examine. Additionally, their framing of hiphopsploitation by blaxploitation, Spike Lee, and the ghetto action film cycle, further
stresses the importance of drawing out the place hip-hopsploitation has in influencing not
only the mainstream articulation and appropriation of hip-hop culture, but the
incorporation of its articulated representations of blackness and forms of black cinema as
well.
Where Watkins and Grant dismiss the importance of the hip-hopsploitation films,
Murray Forman, in his book chapter “‘The ‘Hood Took Me Under,’” acknowledges their
importance. Like Watkins and Grant, his primary focus seems to be Spike Lee and the
21
90s urban/ghetto film cycle, and his discussion of the hip-hopsploitation films serves
once more to frame the central concern. Further, in line with the rest of the book,
Forman’s interest in these films is less about hip-hop per se and more about what he calls
the “urban geography” of this “Cinematic ‘Hood Genre.” Even so, he recognizes to some
degree the significance of these films on the way that hip-hop is being articulated. In
talking about the hip-hopsploitation films, he writes, “In retrospect, these films are often
regarded as relatively overt attempts at industry appropriation of hip-hop’s cultural forms,
though they did manage to disseminate surface images of the growing movement more
widely into the social mainstream” (Forman The 'Hood Comes First : Race, Space, and
Place in Rap and Hip-Hop 256). Here Forman is echoing my claim that these films
played an important role in the dissemination and appropriation of hip-hop during its
debutant years. Forman stops short of extending this idea to discuss the way in which the
appropriation and dissemination also did the work of articulating hip-hop. This shouldn’t
be surprising, however, since as already mentioned, Forman’s main concern is with
notions of “the ‘Hood,” the urban ghetto geography, and not the articulation of hip-hop.
McCluskey and Simpson are similarly focused on “the urban” in their paper,
“Urban Testimonials: Hip Hop Culture in Film.” While this very short paper provides a
good survey of hip-hop in film, it does little more than give a brief discussions of Wild
Style, Breakin’, Beat Street, and Krush Groove. Even though McCluskey and Simpson
make an explicit link between the commodification of hip-hop and its appearance in hiphopsploitation films, their essay never pushes beyond the general overview. As a genre
essay, their paper is more concerned with laying out criteria for inclusion, and films that
then qualify. At first it’s difficult to see the connection they’re trying to make between
the genre they call “urban testimonials” and hip-hop, but the fifth out of six features listed
as part of the criteria is that “urban testimonials promote hip hop in both material and
mythic ways. In keeping with the history of the relationship between American film
production and black creative expression, the testimonial provides a vehicle by which hip
22
hop artists may display and popularize their creative persona” (McCluskey and Simpson
6). According to McCluskey and Simpson, this runs both ways. They write, “but
hypermasculine braggadocio and street credibility are requisites for success in hip hop,
both on the stage and in the ‘hood’” (McCluskey and Simpson 6).
Though this is all consistent with the characterization of the research foci of
Forman, Watkins, and Grant, the manner in which McCluskey and Simpson seem to
equate the urban with hip-hop has interesting implications for my own discussion of
articulations of hip-hop. It’s quite clear in their essay that McCluskey and Simpson have
already articulated hip-hop with an urban, ghetto existence, among other notions. They
write in the introduction:
Erected upon the expressions and stylistic moves of young inner-city black folks,
and emerging from the streets of urban America, hip hop culture absorbs and
reflects the grittiness of the cityscape. Hip hop evokes—in rap music, poetics,
film, fashion, and speech—a sermonic and urgent performance style that
incorporates the life lore of a strata of black urban existence. Despite the selfconsciousness implicit in terms like “movement’ and the overly commodified
formula of some of its renderings, this testosterone-laden genre and most of its
adherents swear by the creed of realness.” The goal is to “keep it real” and urban
life fuels that urge to tell the world how “real” it can get. (McCluskey and
Simpson 1)
In these few sentences, McCluskey and Simpson articulate hip-hop with blackness,
(“gangsta”) rap, authenticity (“realness”), and a testosterone-laden misogyny, not to
mention the gritty urban lifestyle. What makes this interesting is the way that the authors
seem to completely ignore the work of articulation that they are doing. Thus, while their
essay provides very little in the way of content about the hip-hopsploitation film cycle, it
does offer me with another text through which to examine the articulation of hip-hop to
blackness and a string of other signifiers.
Hip-Hop
As noted earlier, texts that focus on hip-hop culture itself, whether scholarly or
popular, largely leave these films out of their discussions, dismissing them when they are
included. This once more raises the question of why these films are excluded? In other
23
words, why don’t these films count as hip-hop? Since my project is concerned with the
articulation of hip-hop—and not just the hip-hopsploitation film genre—the general
history of hip-hop is an important body of work for me. Additionally, because of my
secondary focus on issues of race, class, gender, and sexuality—in particular the way that
hip-hop is articulated to misogyny, homophobia, and hyper-masculine blackness—I want
to position myself in relation to texts that look at the intersection of hip-hop with these
axes of identity.
Chang’s Can’t Stop, Won’t Stop, one of the most comprehensive histories of hiphop, is one of the only general and historical hip-hop texts to discussion the entire group
of films. Though he cites all eleven, it is Beat Street to which he devotes almost two full
pages, and Breakin’ is the only other film to even garner as much as a few summary
sentences on plot. Chang’s book is the exception, though, even in books that purport to
cover the convergence of hip-hop and film. While a more general text like Chang’s is
important for framing the history of hip-hop (and I draw from it often over the course of
the dissertation), it is also precisely because of this framing that I think it’s important to
be critical of how I use the book. In other words, Chang, as with most scholars of hiphop, tend to rehearse the same general history of hip-hop that articulates it to rap music as
7
a product of African-American culture.
In many ways, a little known text entitled Fresh: Hip Hop Don’t Stop by Nelson
George et al., written in 1985, is a more significant work for me. First, it’s
contemporaneous to the historical moment at the center of my analysis, and as a result, to
the hip-hopsploitation films as well. This means it functions doubly as a text about the
historical period I want to discuss, as well as being an artifact from that period. Thus it is
illuminating to look at the way Fresh also functions to articulate hip-hop. As four
7
Despite, as I discuss in more detail in the final chapter, the tendency of simultaneously
chronicling a host of alternative influences not essentially linked to blackness.
24
collected essays on rapping, graffiti, fashion, and breaking—as well as an introduction by
music journalist Nelson George and a forward by Kurtis Blow, one of the first hip-hop
artists to have any musical success with a record label—the book provides a picture of
how hip-hop was being constructed by people in the middle of the 1980s. For example,
the touchstone of each piece of the book seems to be a fear for the way that mainstream
culture is appropriating hip-hop and consequently its possible demise. This is followed
by an idealistic expression of hope that hip-hop can overcome everything and become the
voice of the disenfranchised urban poor.
Steven Hager’s Hip Hop: The Illustrated History of Break Dancing, Rap Music,
and Graffiti, and David Toop’s The Rap Attack: African Jive to New York Hip Hop, both
also written in the mid-1980s, similarly offer me with snapshots of how hip-hop was
being articulated during the time period as well as being excellent sources on hip-hop’s
history. In all three, there’s a clear understanding of hip-hop as a set of cultural practices
cohering around breaking, graffiti, and party-DJing (though sometimes it’s referred to as
“rap music”) rather than the more essentializing tendency of later histories to reduce hiphop solely to its articulation as rap music culture.
Tricia Rose’s Black Noise, the first major book-length work of scholarship to take
hip-hop seriously as a legitimate cultural text, and Forman’s The ‘Hood Comes First are
both interesting because they foreground the locality of hip-hop, specifically the post
industrial urban landscape, or ghetto, that birthed hip-hop. Forman’s text is useful as a
model; my focus on the articulation of hip-hop is similar to the way he seeks to look at
the changing articulation of terms like “ghetto” and “‘hood” in relation to hip-hop.
Though Rose looks at the urban setting of hip-hop, her book, as one of the first in hip-hop
studies, is appropriately more broadly focused. One advantage of Rose is that she is
aware of her position as both a fan and critic, and makes a concerted effort to produce
neither an uncritical piece of fandom nor an alienated work of scholarship, setting forth
an important example for scholars like myself that hope to follow in her footstep.
25
Yet, she also tends to see hip-hop as only a positive force. Though it’s possible to
view hip-hop, rap especially, as a politically resistant expression of urban youth
disenfranchisement, which Rose does, this ignores very particular racial, gender, and
sexual, not to mention historical and economic, conditions. First, taking hip-hop as a
locus of cultural resistance to hegemony works only if one assumes that the primary
consumers of hip-hop are black, and that the effects that Rose articulates—e.g. that hiphop brings communities together and radicalizes them—are also true. However if one
assumes that the primary consumers of hip-hop are white, which evidence suggests is
more accurate (and clearly reflecting in the prevailing logic of hip-hop marketing), then
hip-hop seems less a site of resistance and more a site of consumption in the vain of
hook’s essay, “Eating the Other,” a set of issues addressed in Chapter 6. This utopian
bent is an evident trend in much of the early scholarship on hip-hop.
Later texts, such as George’s Hip-Hop America, Bakari Kitwana’s The Hip-Hop
Generation, and the even more recent Hip Hop Matters by S. Craig Watkins, move away
from this by focusing on the socio-political and cultural dimensions of hip-hop. All are
historical in some senses—though each does their best to add distinctive elements—but
by and large the historical aspect is meant to help frame hip-hop as a “movement.” Of
course aspects of these books are significant for my project in the different ways that they
go about doing this. For example, Kitwana’s repeated characterization of the hip-hop
generation as both black and Hispanic while simultaneously labeling hip-hop itself as
black—though seemingly only a tiny part of his book—has significant implications for
the way it sheds light on the dominant articulation of hip-hop to blackness. It’s just such
an inconsistency that interests me as I try to examine why hip-hop is articulated to rap
music and blackness, and what is at stake in that articulation.
The intersection of race and hip-hop is an important part of the project, and
several texts are already in the conversation I wish to join. Among them are Greg Tate’s
Everything but the Burden: What White People Are Taking from Black Culture,
26
Kitwana’s Why White Kids Love Hip Hop: Wangstas, Wiggers, Wannabes, and the New
Reality of Race in America, and Rodriquez’ “Color-Blind Ideology and the Cultural
Appropriation of Hip-Hop.” Though the first is not limited to hip-hop, any discussion of
white appropriations of black culture is certainly relevant for my project given that it
contextualizes the white appropriation of hip-hop. As the title suggests, Kitwana’s book
is meant to address the question of why white kids love hip-hop, and Rodriquez conducts
an ethnographic study of the way white concert-goers use color-blind ideology to
rationalized their raced consumption of hip-hop. My main concern with these texts is
that they all ultimately reify a notion of hip-hop as falling on the black end of a
black/white continuum. I don’t necessarily want to suggest that hip-hop is not black,
merely question the taken-for-granted nature of this articulation. Thus a more useful
look, for my purposes, at racially inflected cultural appropriation is Yousman’s essay,
“Blackophilia and Blackophobia: White Youth, the Consumption of Rap Music, and
White Supremacy.” In his essay, Yousman attempt to analyze how the white
consumption of hip-hop tends to support racist white supremacist ideology rather than
encourage cross-racial identification. As my more detailed treatment of this essay in
Chapter 6 notes, the only problem with Yousman’s critique is that he too seems to
ultimately fall back on a notion of hip-hop as black.
Though not interested in whiteness and hip-hop, Annette Saddik’s essay, “Rap’s
Unruly Body,” Herman Gray’s “Black Masculinity and Visual Culture,” and Kitwana’s
earliest book, The Rap on Gangsta Rap all examine the articulation of black masculinity
with hip-hop in the form of “gangsta” rap. What I find interesting about these three,
besides the fact that they’re discussing black masculinity within hip-hop, is that they
seem to flip the usual progression of hip-hop scholarship. By and large, the trajectory of
the scholarship has been from a very utopian and idealistic reading of hip-hop as
subversive subculture; to a discussion of its imminent potential as a cultural movement;
to a lament of its corporate appropriation; to, finally, a critique of the way that it
27
reinforces hegemonic domination. By this measure, Kitwana’s book should be praising
the subversive content of gangsta rap while the other two critiqued the way, as corporate
appropriated African-American culture, it upholds oppression. Instead, Kitwana’s text is
highly critical of gangsta rap and the music industry, especially in relation to later books.
Gray and Saddik, however, proceed to laud gangsta rap as a site for subverting white
power via the showcasing of a violent, dangerous, and “unruly” black body. While
certainly a legitimate strand of reasoning, none of them fully address how the
representations of a dangerous and “unruly” black body may in fact not be subversive so
much as they may aid in the rationalization of the policing of black space, something
Rose has also mentioned in her work.
In Black Noise, Rose sets the tone for feminist critiques of hip-hop by including
rap’s sexual and gender politics as one of its main areas of exploration. The primary
critique of hip-hop has indeed come from feminists who point to the seeming dominance
of a misogynistic and homophobic culture within hip-hop. Like Rose, most of the
feminist work on hip-hop comes from people that are self-proclaimed lovers of hip-hop.
This is certainly consistent with the rather generic feminist adage of “the personal is
political.” Joan Morgan’s When Chicken Heads Come Home to Roost and Ayana Byrd’s
“Claiming Jezebel” fit into this in the way that the authors seem primarily interested in
making their love for hip-hop congruent with their feminist convictions. Related to this
kind of feminist critique have been attempts to recuperate the role of women within hiphop, something Byrd also tackles in her essay.
One such book-length text is Gwendolyn Pough’s Check it While I Wreck It. In
addition to covering gender and hip-hop more generally, Pough works to connect, and
therefore elevate the importance of, such rappers as Missy Elliot, Lill’ Kim, and Queen
Latifah with influential historical figures like Sojourner Truth. While I agree with the
overall goal of making a feminist critique within hip-hop, I can’t help reading their
analyses through a Butlerian critique that problematizes attempts at intervening in gender
28
politics that ultimately rest on a gendered subject constituted through essentialist notions
of gender. I believe that my project, by attempting to break down the reductionist and
essentialist articulation of hip-hop to a string of problematic signifiers—for example
misogyny, homophobia, violence, hyper-masculinity, and blackness—offers a more
powerful and sustained way of moving towards a socially just hip-hop that is aware of its
own relations of power.
In a different vein, Ellie Hisama and Evan Rapport’s Critical Minded: New
Approaches to Hip Hop Studies is a good example of music based hip-hop studies. What
sets this slim volume apart is that it’s focus comes not from scholars in fields like cultural
studies, American studies, and sociology. Instead, the essays are written by graduate
students studying music. I’m not sure how “new” this is, since it largely serves to
reinforce the already dominant articulation of hip-hop to rap music as its primary
element. But, this text may also be more significant, when it comes to my dissertation at
least, for what the project assumes than for what the essays themselves say; while the
collection of essays are informative in their own rights, the book as a whole is valuable
for the way it articulates hip-hop to rap music in contrast to how mid-80s texts, the hiphopsploitation films included, articulated hip-hop. Similarly, Adam Krims’ Rap Music
and the Poetics of Identity, and Josh Kun’s Audiotopia: Music, Race, and America also
reinforce the dominant articulation of hip-hop to rap with their focus on the musical
aspects of hip-hop. However, the focus on the racial politics of hip-hop, and the
mechanisms of cultural identity formation that function within this articulation, make
these books useful for my project in other ways as well.
Though far from a complete review of the literature on hip-hop, the above offers a
relevant overview for the purposes of my dissertation. Two important points bear
repeating. First, though the hip-hopsploitation films are mentioned within some film
texts, by and large they are ignored. As reflected by Donalson’s uniquely comprehensive
treatment of them this may be interpreted as symptomatic of the process of articulation I
29
wish to describe. Whereas Donalson’s discussion of the films can’t avoid addressing the
rearticulation of hip-hop away from breaking, graffiti, and DJing and towards rap
music—and by extension the racial and social politics involved in such a shift—other
texts are able to ignore this rearticulation by ignoring the hip-hopsploitation films.
Second, this same tendency is reflected in general histories of hip-hop. Like the films,
the texts written in the mid-80s seem to articulate hip-hop as a set of cultural practices
that include breaking, graffiti, and party-DJing as equally constitutive components of the
culture. Later histories, even if, like Chang’s, they include significant discussion of the
other elements, nevertheless tend to fall back upon equating hip-hop to both rap music
culture and blackness. I repeat these two trends here because they are important in
setting the groundwork for the argument I make in the body of the dissertation.
Chapter Summaries
As already noted at the beginning of this introduction, the purpose of this
dissertation is to question the stable construction of hip-hop as rap music culture and
further understand the shifting articulation of hip-hop in the mid-1980s. I begin building a
foundation for doing so in Chapter 2, using an analysis of the hip-hopsploitation films to
map the changing articulation of hip-hop in the 1980s. I start by defining the hiphopsploitation film genre and engaging with genre theory and work on exploitation films.
I then use an intertextual analysis of the films to illuminate the two competing
articulations of hip-hop at work in the hip-hopsploitation films; most prevalent is the
articulation of hip-hop as a set of cultural practices, though this is ultimately eclipsed by
the then emerging articulation of hip-hop as rap music culture.
What the analysis of the hip-hopsploitation films shows is that an alternate
articulation of hip-hop was dominant at the beginning of the 80s, making it clear that the
definition of hip-hop is historically contingent rather than given. In Chapter 3, I use a
close reading of Beat Street to form a clearer picture of the articulation of hip-hop as a set
of cultural practices. More specifically, I look at the way Beat Street represents gender,
30
race, and ethnicity in hip-hop, arguing that the articulation of hip-hop as a set of cultural
practices is ultimately more inclusive and multicultural than the articulation of hip-hop as
rap music culture. Put differently, hip-hop has not always been so exclusively articulated
to the string of socio-politically problematic signifiers that it currently is via “gangsta”
rap music.
In the next two chapters, I argue that one possible influence for the shift in hiphop’s articulation can be found through materialist readings of media technology. In
Chapter 4, I use the so-called technological determinist theories of Harold Innis and
Marshall McLuhan to read hip-hop and its constitutive elements—breaking, graffiti,
DJing, and MCing—as media technologies. From there, I analyze the particular
structural or medial qualities of hip-hop in relation to the work of Innis and McLuhan,
arguing that the different qualities of the individual elements as media limited to varying
degrees the possibilities of each for success in mainstream society. I conclude Chapter 4
with a medial reading of the two competing articulations of hip-hop—hip-hop as a set of
cultural practices and hip-hop as rap music culture—not only showing that the unique
medial qualities of each made them incompatible, but also that these medial qualities may
help explain why hip-hop was rearticulated in the late-80s as rap music culture.
I continue my examination of materialist theories of media technologies in
Chapter 5, extending my use of McLuhan as well as engaging with German media
theorist Friedrich Kittler. I argue that the medial qualities of MCing in the form of rap
music made it more suitable for commodification than breaking, graffiti, or party-DJing.
As an aural medium, MCing/rapping simply require consumer home audio systems to
effectively commodify hip-hop. In contrast, breaking, graffiti, and party-DJing are visual
and tactile media, requiring consumer home video systems. In the second part of the
chapter, I compare the state of consumer audio and video technologies, showing that the
high expense and low saturation of video hindered the commodification of these visual
forms of hip-hop while the low cost and high saturation of audio encouraged the
31
commodification of rapping. Since the articulation of hip-hop as a set of cultural
practices coheres around these visual elements, this resulted in a shift of the articulation
of hip-hop towards rap music.
In Chapter 6, I turn away from the materiality of hip-hop and technology to focus
on the influence of socio-cultural forces in shifting the articulation of hip-hop. I begin by
calling into question the basic assumption that hip-hop is an “authentic” manifestation of
black popular culture, arguing that in reading hip-hop through articulation theory we can
come to see that there is in fact no-necessary connection between hip-hop and
“blackness.” The connection of hip-hop to blackness is not given, or the product of
essentializing notions of race and culture, but rather the product of ideology. Hip-hop
becomes essentially black in society’s collective conscience as a means of facilitating its
appropriation by a mainstream (white) audience that is primarily interested in consuming
it as a form of blackness.
What’s more, the interest is in consuming an explicitly hyper-masculine,
misogynistic, and homophobic capitalist hip-hop that can allow a white audience to
safely appropriate these behaviors—behaviors already embedded in the dominant, white,
social order in the first place—without seeming to embody them. Through hip-hop, a
dominant white power structure can displace its ideology into a surrogate black body.
The white audience then gains the pleasure and power of these positions while
simultaneously allowing whites to disidentify from them, thus further sanctioning a
disavowal of the responsibilities of racial appropriation and the racist, misogynistic, and
homophobic consequences of dominant US ideology.
In Chapter 7, I conclude the dissertation by restating my overall argument and its
implication. In particular, I address the possibility that by showing that there is nonecessary connection between hip-hop and blackness, I run the risk of reinscribing or
sanctioning the racially charged appropriation of culture or reifying unequal and unjust
relations of power within cultural production. At the same time, my argument makes it
32
possible to also see that there is no-necessary connection between blackness and hip-hop,
as well as a string of socio-politically problematic and regressive signifiers like
misogyny, homophobia, hyper-masculinity, hyper-capitalism, and violence. This in turn
makes visible the ideological glue that holds these connections together and reveals the
white capitalist patriarchal hegemony underneath.
In this final chapter I also assess some of the limitations of the dissertation,
namely the narrow focus on only one set of media texts—the hip-hopsploitation films—
the reliance on technological determinist theories of reading the materiality of media
technologies, and the only partial treatment of the social, cultural, and historical roots of
the change in hip-hop’s articulation. In spite of these limitations, I conclude Chapter 7 by
offering some potential avenues for future research made possible by my dissertation.
First, I discuss the possibility of deepening the cultural-historical analysis of the shift in
hip-hop’s articulation. In particular, the possibility of further examining what the
representation of blackness within the articulation of hip-hop as rap music culture tells us
about whiteness and white mainstream society during the mid- to late-80s.
Second, I briefly sketch the possibility of replacing race with place at the center of
definitions of hip-hop. This alternative articulation of hip-hop would use theories of
intersectionality drawn from post-colonial, Diaspora studies, and critical geography, in
addition to a theory of “sampling” contained in hip-hop itself. In doing so, it would
reformulate hip-hop as the product of place, a nexus for numerous intersecting axes of
stratification and identity, including not only race, but also class, gender, and nationality
as well. Consequently, race becomes one of many defining influences of hip-hop rather
than the determining one.
33
CHAPTER 2:
REPRESENTING HIP-HOP IN FILM
Introduction
This chapter provides a foundation for my dissertation by analyzing a small group
of mid-1980s films I call “hip-hopsploitation.” As these films illustrate, mainstream
culture was defining hip-hop in the early and mid-1980s primarily through breaking,
graffiti, and DJing. By the late-1980s, however, this had all but reversed, with MCing in
the form of “rapping” taking center stage as the defining practice of hip-hop. I start this
chapter with a brief historical overview of hip-hop and film history in order to
contextualize the emergence of the hip-hopsploitation films. I then define the hiphopsploitation films as a genre. This requires both reviewing contemporary approaches
to genre theory and synthesizing a new approach that more completely fits the needs of
my dissertation. This also means placing hip-hopsploitation in relation to other
exploitation genres like blaxploitation, and ultimately accounting for the importance of
reading the hip-hopsploitation films as an exploitation genre. I conclude the chapter by
using an intertextual analysis of the films to map how they represented hip-hop. We
might call this an “imaginary hip-hop culture,” since it is important to specify that I am
talking about the way that popular and media culture constructed an articulation of hiphop culture and not some “real” or “actual” hip-hop culture. In short, I build on previous
approaches to genre theory, offering a new articulated genre theory that allows me to
frame the hip-hopsploitation films as a genre, and thus as a delineated set of media texts,
in order to illuminate the way these films worked to construct hip-hop culture in the mid1980s.
In mapping the construction of hip-hop culture in the hip-hopsploitation films,
I’m able to more clearly sketch this early, largely pre-commodified, articulation of hiphop connected to graffiti, breaking, and DJing as a set of cultural practices. It also makes
34
it possible to distinguish it from the later rap music-centered articulation that would
emerge more strongly in the wake of the film cycle. Not only do the hip-hopsploitation
films show that hip-hop was primarily centered around breaking, graffiti, and early partyDJing, but that it was also less restrictively tied to the homophobic, violent, and hypermasculine blackness now synonymous with “gangsta” rap. For a detailed look at the
individual films and their reception in the press, please consult Appendix A on page 252.
In the following chapter, I will also read the film Beat Street (1984) in more detail as a
case study for examining the articulation of hip-hop within the hip-hopsploitation films,
using it to further illuminate the way race, gender, and class in particular were
represented and articulated to hip-hop within the films.
Before focusing on how the hip-hopsploitation films offer an alternative
articulation of hip-hop, I must first define the hip-hopsploitation film cycle as a genre. In
particular, they represent a return to my initial research question: Why do we currently
define hip-hop as we do? In the first instance, demonstrating evidence of a set of
alternative historical representations of hip-hop illuminates that “hip-hop” is itself not a
stable term, but a constructed one that has always been in flux. Further analyzing how
this alternative historical representation articulates hip-hop to a particular constellation of
possibilities and practices begins to answer this fundamental question by revealing what
is at stake in defining hip-hop in particular ways. In the second instance, defining hiphopsploitation as a genre is a way of answering an intermediate question: why aren’t
these films hip-hop, or part of the hip-hop canon? Answering this question begins to
necessitate an analysis of how the hip-hopsploitation genre represents hip-hop.
In other words, defining hip-hopsploitation allows for a definition of hip-hop
itself by offering a coherent example of an alternative historical representation of hiphop. Delineating the hip-hopsploitation films makes it possible to delineate a discursively
constructed representation of hip-hop, which in turn makes it possible to analyze how
hip-hop was being defined at this particular moment. Without first identifying the hip-
35
hopsploitation films as a set of texts—defining them as a genre—there is no way to make
them stand out against the background of other media texts. To put it in terms of Hall
and articulation theory, I need to affect a momentary theoretical closure in order to
proceed with my analysis (Hall "Cultural Studies and Its Theoretical Legacies" 264). A
definition of hip-hopsploitation as a genre, however, first requires at least a cursory
understanding of hip-hop history as well as a clearly defined theory of genre.
Context: A Historical Preamble
Since there are already plenty of comprehensive histories of hip-hop in print, I
will offer only a brief overview sufficient enough for someone who is not necessarily
1
familiar with the history of hip-hop. Part of the difficulty of doing this, however, is that
in telling a particular history—in highlighting certain events, practices, or people—I am
defining, or articulating, hip-hop. In other words, by articulating some practices and not
others, I inherently advocate a particular definition of hip-hop rather than others. Since
my project is meant to call into question the very assumption of a stable “hip-hop,” it
becomes difficult to offer a history that both avoids this and remains brief.
While I cannot ameliorate this problem entirely, I am choosing to offer a
chronological thumbnail accompanied by a table of important dates in hip-hop history.
Since hip-hop has been so closely articulated to rap music culture, many histories have
tended to focus on those historical lines that trace back from MCing/rapping as an
element. Similarly, histories told by practitioners of other elements—e.g. graffiti artists
or breakers—tend to stitch together a narrative that elevates the importance of events,
practices, and people connected to that element. To try to minimize this, I will cut across
as wide a cross-section of probable lineages as possible, including important historical
markers from all four elements. However, it is also clear that the argument of my
dissertation biases me against a rap music centered history of hip-hop, a fact which is
1
Please see the literature review in the introduction for historical sources on hip-hop.
36
likely reflected in the history I construct below and one I acknowledge fully as a
limitation of my analysis.
Overview
Hip-hop sprung out of the South Bronx in the late 60’s and early 1970’s, the
product of a postindustrial urban landscape (Rose 34). While graffiti had been in New
York for at least a decade—in some ways making it the first independent element to
develop—it wasn’t until it converged with DJing and breaking that it became part of hiphop culture. The oft-told story of hip-hop’s genesis begins with a trio of DJs, Kool Herc,
Afrika Bambaata, and Grandmaster Flash. Herc was the first to spin, organizing the
apartment block and block-parties that would lead him to invent both the break beat and
its extension. The break, also known as the “get down section,” was the part of the
record where the lyrics dropped out and what was left was a rhythm and bass heavy
segment with high dance-potential. By extending this section, Herc set the stage for the
emergence of “breaking” or “b-boying”—often erroneously labeled breakdancing by the
media, a term not favored by breakers, b-boys, and b-girls themselves.
Bambaata, a former gang leader and graffiti artist, had an eclectic taste in music
that would become one of his signature features as a DJ and presaged hip-hop’s later
reliance on sampling. Using his gang experience, Bambaata organized the Zulu Nation,
one of hip-hop’s first collective organizations, bringing together breakers, DJs, graffiti
artists, and, later, MCs, ultimately uniting these “four elements” under the solitary banner
of hip-hop. While Herc too had dabbled in graffiti before taking up DJing, Bambaata
offers a clearer embodiment of the historical connection between the two elements.
Similarly, Grandmaster Flash offers a convenient embodiment for the development of
MCing, the final element to develop. Not only did Flash push DJing to a higher level,
popularizing hip-hop’s signature sounds, the scratch—which was “invented” by Flash’s
protégé Grandwizard Theodore—and the seamless and stylized cutting between different
records, but his increased interest in showmanship led him to include a hype-man at his
37
Figure 1: Timeline of Hip-Hop History
1960s -Graffiti begins emerging in NY along with gangs.
1971 -“Taki 183,” a Greek teen from Washington Heights becomes first well known
graffiti artist after NY Times runs article about his tagging.
1972 -Phase 2 invents “bubble letters” and Superkool223 writes first “top to bottom”
piece, two major innovations in graffiti.
1973 -Kool Herc DJs sister’s party in the Bronx, NY (first hip-hop DJ party).
1974 - Afrika Bambaataa forms Zulu Nation.
-Herc’s success inspires Bambaataa, Flash, and others to begin DJing at parties.
1975 -Herc coins the term “b-boy” (“break-boy”), breaking becomes distinct element.
-Grandmaster Flash begins revolutionizing DJing, refines extension of the break.
-Flash protégé Grandwizard Theodore accidentally discovers scratching.
1976 -Bambaataa and Disco King Mario hold first DJ battle at Bronx River Club.
1977 -Bronx B-boys Jimmy D and Jojo establish Rock Steady Crew.
-Herc is stabbed at a party while stopping a fight and withdraws from DJing.
1979 -Grandmaster Flash forms GMF and the Furious Five with several MCs,
including Melle Mel.
-Sylvia Robinson puts together the Sugar Hill Gang to release “Rapper’s
Delight,” which eventually reaches #38 on the Billboard pop charts.
-Funky Four + One forms with Sha Rock as first big female MC.
-Russell Simmons gets Kurtis Blow signed to Mercury, first major label rap act.
-Richard "Crazy Legs" Colón joins Rock Steady Crew.
1980 -Blondie releases “Rapture,” which makes several hip-hop references.
-Kurtis Blow’s “The Breaks” becomes rap’s first Gold Single
-Fab 5 Freddy paints famous “Campbell’s soup can” burner on IRT line.
1981 -Release of Grandmaster Flash on the Wheels of Steel, the first album to focus
primarily on DJing.
-Lincoln Center Battle between Rock Steady and Dynamic Rockers garners first
national media attention, including coverage in National Geographic.
1982 -“broken window theory” introduced and eventually used as part of rational for
harsh anti-graffiti campaigns in NYC.
1983 -Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five release “The Message,” the first overtly
political rap to hit the mainstream—“message” rap is born.
1984 -Breaking featured in opening to Olympic Games in Los Angeles.
-Russell Simmons and Rick Rubin form Def-Jam record label.
-Fresh Fest concert tour brings Run-DMC, Kurtis Blow, and the Dynamic
Breakers, among others, to 27 major US cities.
-Graffiti Rock, a hip-hop-based TV show, pilot airs but show is not continued.
-Height of the “crack epidemic” begins.
1985 -Breaking featured as part of President Reagan’s second inauguration
-Sugar Hill records goes into bankruptcy and closes.
1986 -Run-DMC release Raising Hell, with remake of Aerosmith’s “Walk This Way;”
become first Grammy-nominated rap group (best R&B vocal performance).
1987 -Public Enemy releases debut album “Bum Rush the Show” on Def Jam.
-Ice-T releases debut album “Rhyme Pays,” first major West Coast rap album.
1988 -MTV debuts “Yo! MTV Raps”
-NWA, pioneering gangsta rap group, release Straight Outta Compton
1989 -NY MTA removes all marked cars from lines, declares victory in “graffiti war.”
38
parties. This hype-man would eventually transition from supporting character to fully
independent artist, splitting from the DJ in the 80s to become the central figure in rap
music. Despite the earlier recording of hip-hop’s first widely released record—the Sugar
2
Hill Gang’s “Rapper’s Delight”—in 1979 , the hip-hopsploitation cycle rose from an
early 1980s hip-hop that saw rapping as a part of a larger cultural practice, if not
sometimes the quaternary part behind breaking, graffiti, and DJing.
Filmic Context
The filmic context that set the stage for the hip-hopsploitation films is equally
important for understanding how they functioned to represent hip-hop in ways that helped
re-articulate it. The hip-hopsploitation films followed two clear cinematic trends:
blaxploitation and dance and music themed films. While the blaxploitation genre will be
taken up in more detail below, I will briefly sketch the salient points of connection here.
Blaxploitation was one of the first attempts by firms within mainstream American film
production to exploit a particular sub-audience generally outside the mainstream:
African-Americans. The firms producing these films—American International Films,
Warner Bros, Cinerama, Universal, MGM, among others—were certainly not all major
production companies, but they were nevertheless part of the Hollywood establishment.
What makes blaxploitation different from the earlier race films, for example, was
that by and large, the race films were made by African-American firms operating parallel
to but still outside of Hollywood, an economic situation that may have been uniquely
possible within the segregated US prior to the ‘60s. Blaxploitation films were an attempt
by predominantly white filmmakers to make substantial profits by feeding cheaply
produced representations of African-Americans and African-American culture back to
2
Released in the summer of 1979, “King Tim III” by the Fatback Band was the first
recorded “rap” song, beating the release of “Rapper’s Delight” by two month. Because
the Fatback Band was not a “rap” group, and because of the relative obscurity of the
“King Tim III,” Sugar Hill’s “Rapper’s Delight” is often cited as the first recorded rap
song.
39
African-Americans. In short, the exploitation was two fold—content exploiting AfricanAmerican culture and marketing aimed at exploiting revenue from African-American
audiences. This is exploitation because in both cases, the profits were generally not
shared by African-Americans, but remained in the pockets of white Americans within the
film industry.
In some ways, blaxploitation can be included within the ranks of dance and music
themed films. One of blaxploitation’s key features is the use of popular funk, soul, and
rhythm and blues artists on the soundtracks. The films departed from conventional film
scores to highlight popular music, and in many cases, the soundtracks gained more fame
than the films. Some, like Isaac Hayes’ theme from Shaft, even won awards. Similarly,
the late-70s and early-80s saw several films attempting to profit from popular music and
dance trends—Saturday Night Fever (1979), Staying Alive (1979), All That Jazz (1979),
Flashdance (1983), Purple Rain (1984), and Footloose (1984) being some of the more
well known. While not exploitation films in the way that blaxploitation or hiphopsploitation were, these dance and music themed films nevertheless attempted to
capitalize on popular cultural trends. Further, like blaxploitation, which was largely the
product of Hollywood’s desperate search for cheap and relatively low-risk revenue
streams following it’s near collapse in the late-1960, the music and dance themed films of
the early 1980s were a new source of content Hollywood could cheaply mine for profit.
The precedents set by blaxploitation and the early-80s music and dance themed
films meant that the hip-hopsploitation film cycle emerged at a point in cinematic history
when Hollywood was not only looking for a new culture to exploit, but had also
expanded the scope of possible cultures beyond the more traditional confines of racial or
even gendered categorization. In other words, the hip-hopsploitation films attempted to
hybridize the music and dance themed films with the lucrative blaxploitation model in
40
3
order to exploit a sub-cultural form like hip-hop. What’s more, the political economy of
Hollywood during the early to mid-1980s exerted many of the same pressures as it had in
the late-60s and early 70s when blaxploitation emerged. Traditional revenue streams
were drying up and film producers could no longer rely on the basic formulas for studio
success that had carried them through the first half of the 20th century.
In both cases, Hollywood turned to lower budget productions. These were
generally meant to appeal to previously marginalized demographics by feeding
representations of culture with which they were thought to identify. Yet these
representations were also sufficiently watered down or stereotypical as not to offend or
alienate too much of the “mainstream” audiences. While for blaxploitation, the object
and audience were both African-American, the hip-hopsploitation films were intended to
capitalize on the poverty stricken urban New York scene and the youth-of-color oriented
hip-hop culture. Hip-hopsploitation tried to repackage hip-hop for consumption by
youth, including and maybe even in particular middle class white youth.
Hip-Hop in Film
Thus, after a spate of appearances by breakers in the media, culminating in the
popular cameo of members from the influential Bronx-based Rock Steady Crew in the
1983 Paramount Pictures hit Flashdance, the stage was set for a more sustained filmic
treatment of breaking and other aspects of hip-hop culture. The result was the small body
of films I will theorize as the hip-hopsploitation film genre: Wild Style (1982), Style
Wars (1983), Breakin’ (1984), Beat Street (1984), Breakin’ 2: Electric Boogaloo (1984),
Body Rock (1984), Rappin’ (1985), Krush Groove (1985), Delivery Boys (1985), Fast
Forward (1985), and Turk 182 (1985). These films, all of which were made within a
3
Later “’hood” or “rapsploitation” films from 1989 through the ‘90s, for example Boyz
in the Hood and Do The Right Thing, are more obvious examples of the blaxploitation
model incorporating hip-hop music and culture as it once did funk, soul, and R&B (see
Forman, 2002; Grant, 2004; McCluskey and Simpson, 2002; Watkins, 1998) rather than
of the modification of that model to exploit hip-hop culture.
41
four-year period coinciding with the rise of hip-hop in mainstream media culture, depict
aspects of this subculture in a protypical paracinematic form; that is, they generally
showcase performances of hip-hop held loosely together by a weak narrative structure.
I began using the term “hip-hopsploitation” to characterize the eleven films and
identify them as a genre, because their paracinematic form resembles that of other
exploitation genres such as blaxploitation, martial arts, and pornography. With the
notable exception of Style Wars, the films that comprise the hip-hopsploitation film cycle
all use narrative as a minor cinematic “vehicle” to sell a “gimmick.” In this, hiphopsploitation resembles these other exploitation genres named above, which used a thin
narrative to sell some combination of music, action, martial arts, and/or sex. In coining
the term “hip-hopsploitation,” I hope not only to highlight the similarities between these
genres—or perhaps all of these as merely sub-genres of some larger “exploitation”
genre—but also to call attention to the centrality of exploitation as a historical issue in
hip-hop.
I also want to distinguish “hip-hopsploitation” from what is sometimes referred to
as “rapsploitation.” While this term is popularly used on the internet to refer to any film
containing hip-hop, including those listed above, this is not true of scholarly texts.
Instead, as Guthrie Ramsey notes, “as thematic heirs of the 1970s blaxploitation genre of
film, [it is] the 1990s’ version [that] has been dubbed ‘rapsploitation’. . .” (311). In other
words, the term rapsploitation is used exclusively in scholarly texts to refer to the films of
the early 1990s, namely Boyz in the Hood (1991), New Jack City (1990), and even Spike
Lee’s Do The Right Thing (1989). In this context, the term “rapsploitation” serves to
identify any film influenced by hip-hop, especially one using hip-hop aesthetics or music
within the film. Generally absent from this formulation is the intention to use the term as
a way to identify the exploitative use of hip-hop within a film. An appropriate parallel
would thus be to use blaxploitation as a means of describing any film featuring or
influenced by black culture and black people. Since my purpose is to offer a more
42
narrowly defined term in order to discuss the specific use of hip-hop within these films, a
term like rapslpoitation is not appropriate.
Furthermore, I want to point out the semantic difference between the terms
rapsploitation and hip-hopsploitation. I choose the later because, as the name implies, it
can include the exploitation of any element of hip-hop culture, not just rap. Since the
majority of the films addressed in my project focus on breaking, graffiti, or DJing, rather
than rap, it would be misleading for me to use the less inclusive term. In fact, the
difference between the terms hip-hop and rap is the basis for my project. As I will show
later in the chapter, the hip-hopsploitation films represent hip-hop primarily through
breaking, graffiti, and party-DJing, thus articulating these elements to hip-hop as a set of
cultural practices. I argue that this articulation was dominant in early definitions of hiphop from the 70’s to the late-80s. This is in contrast to the articulation of hip-hop to
MCing as rap music culture, an articulation that began cohering in the late-1980s and has
since come to dominate the earlier one to the point of exclusion. Before doing this,
however, I must first account for the hip-hopsploitation films as a genre. Defining the
films as a genre, and thus situating them within genre theory, is crucial for understanding
how the hip-hopsploitation films worked to articulate hip-hop in the 1980s.
Genre
In beginning to discuss hip-hopsploitation as a genre above, I’ve introduced two
different models for genre identification. In the first instance, I described the hiphopsploitation films as paracinematic, a description that is essentially textual, based upon
characteristics that exist within the texts. In the second instance—which I will return to
shortly—I’ve made a distinction between my suffixal use of exploitation and that of other
theorists, a distinction that hinges on my intended use for the genre as a critic. While
there is a temptation to continue with the textual approach to genre—an approach that is
often dominant in genre analyses—there are several problems with anchoring the hiphopsploitation genre within criteria drawn from the texts themselves. As genre theorist
43
Andrew Tudor explains, when we do so, “we are caught in a circle which first requires
that the films are isolated, for which purposes a criterion is necessary, but the criterion is,
in turn, meant to emerge from the empirically established common characteristics of the
films” (Tudor 18). The criteria we use to define the genre are drawn from the films
4
within the genre being defined. This is tautological, akin to a definition reliant on the
very word being defined. Thus it is problematic for me to base my definition of the hiphopsploitation films as a genre solely on qualities pulled from the group of films itself.
However, as media scholar Jason Mittell notes, “this is not to suggest that genres
are not primarily categories of texts, but there is a crucial difference between conceiving
of genre as a textual category and treating it as a component of a text” (Mittell 5). Genre
refers to texts, but is not necessarily determined by them. Textuality doesn’t have to be
completely evacuated from genre, but there must be some larger definitive force that is
not drawn from the very text being defined. Mittell goes on to suggest a “discursive”
approach to genre, where genre is discursively constructed at the nexus of “the complex
interrelations among texts, industries, audiences, and historical contexts” (Mittell 7).
What’s important and useful about Mittell’s approach to genre for my study of the hiphopsploitation films, is that it reveals the broader socio-cultural significance of genre and
thus of hip-hopsploitation. Genre analyses grounded in aesthetic and textual criteria tend
to be alienated from their social and political contexts. In contrast, the discursive
approach Mittell advocates places this context at the forefront of analysis:
Genre definitions are always partial and contingent, emerging out of specific
cultural relations, rather than abstract textual ideals. We need to examine how
4
This problem is not unique to genre analysis. As Adam Krims points out, the field of
music theory has long struggled with what he calls, “the problem of musical closure,”
where “the only commonly accepted references of musical features are, for the most part,
other music features” Adam Krims, Rap Music and the Poetics of Identity, New
Perspectives in Music History and Criticism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2000) 32. Interestingly, the solution Krims offers to this relies on comparing the stylistic
features of a song with those most frequently found within the genre to which that the
song belongs.
44
genres operate as conceptual frameworks, situating media texts within larger
contexts of understanding. The goal of studying media genres is not to make
broad assertions about the genre as a whole but to understand how genres work
within specific instances and how they fit into larger systems of cultural power.
(Mittell 16)
Like Mittell, film theorist Steve Neale is concerned with a genre theory that is more
firmly contextualized. Neale writes of, “the importance of historicizing generic
definitions and the parameters both of any single generic corpus, and of any specific
generic regime,” and thus the way that genres “are always historically relative, and
therefore historically specific” (Neale 58).
However while Mittell seeks to avoid a genre theory grounded in the text, Neale
retains a concern for the textual and aesthetic qualities of film genre. Instead of reading
these textual and aesthetic criteria as fixed, or prescribed by the genre corpus, Neale is
interested in looking at the way that these very criteria are historically specific. This
allows him to largely by-pass the textual determinism of traditional genre analyses as
critiqued by Mittell and others. Neale writes:
… the basis for an approach [to genre] can perhaps be found in the Russian
Formalist idea that genres can each involve a ‘dominant’ (or dominating)
aesthetic device (or ideological element). On this basis, particular genres can be
characterize, not as the only genres in which given elements, devices and features
occur, but as the ones in which they are dominant, in which they play an overall,
organizing role” (Neale 65-66).
By seeing the definitional elements of genre as themselves historically contingent, and by
basing genre analysis on tracking the changing configuration of criteria used to define
genre, Neale attempts to bridge the textual and discursive gap. What is obviously
appealing about this approach is that it mirrors the larger analytic arch of my project.
Whereas Neale focuses on the shifting constitutive criteria within a genre’s definition,
I’m interested in examining the way that hip-hop’s defining aspects shifted in the 1980s
from breaking, graffiti, and DJing to MCing in the form of rap music, and further
evaluating the potential causes and implications of this shift. In both cases, the emphasis
is on the historical contingency of cultural definitions, and a focus on tracking how
certain elements within definitions come to be dominant.
45
Pragmatic Genre Theory
While both Mittell and Neale offer useful starting points for my application of
genre theory to the hip-hopsploitation films, neither completely meets the needs of my
project nor sufficiently explains my orientation towards the hip-hopsploitation films as a
genre. In order to more comprehensively meet the needs of my project, I want to put
forward my own theory of genre grounded in articulation theory and synthesizing the
approaches of both Mittell and Neale with the “Pragmatic” approach offered by film
genre scholar Rick Altman and literary theorist Adena Rosmarin. What Mittell and Neale
are essentially arguing for is a contextualized genre theory based on the discursive nature
of genre. Scholars and critics interested in genre must read the varying and historically
contingent discourses that construct any given genre. Altman, however, points out that
genres are “multi-discursive” and “multi-coded” (Altman 208). Different user groups
create genres using their own, differently defined, discourses, and as a result, even
discursively defined genres are bounded by the specificity of user groups.
In describing his “pragmatic” approach to genre, Altman is interested in the very
“use factor” (Altman 210) that emerges from these user groups, and he applies it to genre
theory on two levels. First, rather than simply analyze the different strands of discourse
that construct a genre, Altman wants to focus on the purpose these different, often
competing discursive constructions have for their users. Second, Altman also applies this
to the discursive construction of genre as it occurs on the level of the critic and scholar.
In other words, any genre theory or analysis should include some accounting for its own
use of genre. This self-reflexivity is a key component missing from the approaches
offered by Neale and Mittell, and one that Altman largely borrows from Rosmarin.
Though writing about literary genre, Rosmarin’s critique of genre and her suggested
corrective are nevertheless applicable to film genre theory and by extension, my look at
hip-hopsploitation films.
46
As Rosmarin writes, “… genre is most usefully defined as a tool of critical
explanation, as our most powerful and reasoned way of justifying the value we place or
would place on a literary text” (Rosmarin 48-49). She adds, however, that we are best
able “to make such explanations by explicitly choosing our premises and deducing our
texts. The argumentative energy of these explanations goes not into concealment but into
reasoning, not into denials of the premise and the critic’s act but into justifying his chosen
premise by the consistency and richness of the reasoning that follows” (Rosmarin 49).
Not only is genre a powerful tool for studying texts, but its power comes precisely from
the moment when it opens itself up to self-reflexive assessment. Rather than obscure the
critical act, Rosmarin suggests making it explicit and thereby giving the critic a more
solid foundation on which to build the analysis.
5
As already stated, much of the critique of traditional genre theory has been
focused on its reliance on structuring criteria that are drawn from the very texts they are
meant to organize. This is sometimes framed as a problem of prescription versus
description, where the act of deriving the genre framework from within the texts it is
meant to contain in fact prescribes that genre rather than describes it. The value, of
course, is then placed on those approaches to genre that can describe some actual genre as
it functions within society rather than theorize a genre using criteria that are internally
derived, and therefore assumedly subjective if not arbitrary. This latter piece of the
critique is often characterized as being about “theoretical” versus “historical” genres.
Theoretical genres are those created to describe a group of films for theoretical or critical
purposes, while historical genres are those that are discursively created by producers and
consumers within the contextual spaces surrounding the genre (the classical example of a
5
As discussed more in the conclusion, this self-reflexivity is crucial for the politics of my
project, especially as it deals with the implications of my argument about race in Chapter
6. To that end, I think it’s important to build this self-reflexivity into all theoretical levels
of the dissertation as much as possible, and maintain the congruency of my approach and
political orientation.
47
theoretical genre being “film noir,” while the “Western” is a good example of a historical
genre). As Mittell characterizes this critique, it:
Attempts to establish theoretical models of a genre’s formal mechanics or deep
structures of meaning cannot tell us how genres work within a historical context,
how they evolve and emerge, or how they fit into larger relations of power. If our
goal is to understand genres as cultural categories, we should first examine the
discourses that constitute the category before examining the texts that seem
delimited by the genre. While certain instances might dictate the proposal of new
categories, in general it seems that analyzing the operation of historical genres
and their relation to cultural power seems a more pressing concern for media
scholars. (Mittell 18)
Both critiques have serious implications for my project since the dissertation entails
arguing for the hip-hopsploitation films as a genre. I am both creating a new and
therefore “theoretical” genre, and basing it on a group of texts already selected, thereby
situating my genre as prescriptive rather than descriptive.
What is so useful about the pragmatic approach offered by Altman and Rosmarin,
however, is that in widening the discursive frame to cover the scholarly and critical act of
genre analysis, these problems fall away. As Rosmarin argues:
the rhetorical and pragmatic answer to the ‘descriptive or prescriptive’ question is
that the critical genre is prescriptive, but what is prescribed is not literary but
critical practice. The critic who explicitly uses his genre as an explanatory tool
neither claims nor needs to claim that literary texts should be or will be written in
its terms but that, at the present moment and for his implied audience, criticism
can best justify the value of a particular literary text by using these terms…. But
he also justifies his explanation by showing it to be knowing, to be both selfaware and closely reasoned…. But his explanation’s awareness of its provisional
and pragmatic nature also leads to a further and paradoxical claim: that it is
powerful because it has not only the power to correct previous readings but also
the power to inspire the future readings that constitute its own correction.
(Rosmarin 50-51)
Rosmarin shifts the terms of the prescriptive vs. descriptive debate. Rather than
accepting the proposition that a descriptive approach is superior because it is objective,
whereas the prescriptive approach is subjective, she asserts that the descriptive approach
is, like all approaches, always and already subjective. The key is not in denying but in
owning the subjectivity, in making obvious the prescription inherent within the approach.
48
Her response to the theoretical and historical problem is similar. Once again, she
6
points out the falsity of making a distinction between the two in the first place.
Rosmarin writes, “the ‘historical’ genre is a masked ‘theoretical’ genre. The ‘historical
critic has simply—or not so simply—concealed his first or a priori step” (Rosmarin 49).
This is not to negate the substance of the original critique of the “theoretical” genre as
constructed by the scholar, but simply to convert it from a critique to a strength:
…the ‘theoretical’ genre is itself a mask. Like the ‘historical genre, it is a way of
‘grounding’ critical discourse in the not-itself, of displacing constitutive power
from the critic’s explanatory purpose and textualized act. Criticism, however,
does not derive power from what it is not—whether a text or schema. Rather, it
engenders power by what it does. Therefore, it is by explicitly returning
constitutive power to the place where it in practice always resides—in the purpose
and act of criticism—that we fully realize the power of genre. The questions of
origin and chance are answered by this ‘return.’ (Rosmarin 49)
In short, the pragmatic approach offered by Rosmarin and Altman shores up two of the
principle critiques of traditional genre theory. It also offers a useful supplement to the
discursive and formalist approaches put forward by Mittell and Neale by renewing the
focus on the constitutive nature of genre theory and criticism itself.
Articulated Genre Theory
With this in mind, I want to offer a simple synthesis of the discursive, formalist,
and pragmatic approaches in the form of a genre theory grounded in articulation theory.
As already discussed in the introduction, articulation theory is concerned with examining
the way power and ideology are embedded in the various strands that constitute a whole.
In the words of Stuart Hall, “ . . . articulation is both a way of understanding how
ideological elements come, under certain conditions, to cohere together within a
6
Even more to the point, she writes, “the [theoretical/historical] question is not very
useful to ask. It leads us to treat as ‘real’ a conflict that is itself invented, a
terminological definition made to serve philosophical purposes that have largely passed
into history” Adena Rosmarin, The Power of Genre (Minneapolis: University of
Minnesota Press, 1985) 49. This answer, in effect, models her critique of genre—that all
genre theory is constructed to serve a purpose, and the power of genre theory comes in
making that purpose explicit and open to revision.
49
discourse, and a way of asking how they do or do not become articulated, at specific
conjunctures, to certain political subjects” (Grossberg "On Postmodernism and
Articulation: An Interview with Stuart Hall" 141-42). In terms of genre, articulation
theory already includes the understanding that a particular subject (a genre) is in part
discursively created. However what articulation adds to a discursive approach, is an
accounting for the way that genre is always being constantly re-articulated. Mittell’s
approach holds on to a notion of the discursivity of the historical genre as somehow more
legitimate than the discursivity of the theoretical genre, and, by extension, fails to account
for the way that these genres are always being discursively re-created, or the way that
genre theory itself is implicated in this discursive process.
Articulation is also well equipped to deal with the way that power and ideology
operate within this discursive creation, one of the strengths of Mittell’s approach. As
Slack writes, “power not only draws and redraws the connections among the disparate
elements within which identities are designated, but in the process, power designates
certain of these articulations as dominant and others as subordinate” (Slack
"Contextualizing Technologies" 333). To extend this to genre, the various criteria,
qualities, guidelines, or elements that make up a genre come to do so through a process of
selection and revision overseen by power. Articulation thus has the further advantage of
ensuring that this process is not reduced entirely to discourse by anchoring them to the
7
operation of social forces. The criteria that dominate a genre are thus never neutrally
constituted but always come attached to some form of ideology at the behest of power.
At this point, we not only return to Neale's formalist concern with studying the
domination of particular elements within a genre, but also to the pragmatics of Altman
7
According to Slack, this is a particular advantage of Hall’s use of articulation as
opposed to Laclau’s more discursively defined use of articulation. Jennifer Slack, "The
Theory and Method of Articulation in Cultural Studies," Stuart Hall: Critical Dialogues in
Cultural Studies, eds. David Morley and Kuan-Hsing Chen (London: Routledge, 1996)
122-23.
50
and Rosmarin. We can begin to read the selection or domination of particular criteria
within a genre as being the partially submerged form of previous "use factors.” By
framing genre theory in this manner, the critic and scholar of genre are as implicated in
relations of power as any other constituting agent like the audience or industry. In
summary, a genre theory based on articulation sees genre as a set of discursively and
rhetorically constituted elements that cohere, under particular circumstances, around a
seemingly fixed definition in the service of ideology.
This ideology could simply be the rhetorical purpose of a scholar or critic—akin
to the pragmatics of Altman or Rosmarin—or the a more diffused ideology often
embedded in the construction of genre at the level of audience and industry—for example
Lipsitz’s critique of racism, patriarchy, and neo-conservative ideology in the generic
conventions of the late-70s early-80s drama (Lipsitz). What is most important for the
purposes of my project is that a genre theory based on articulation allows scholars to
delineate new genres to fit particular rhetorical and/or ideological needs, so long as they
take care to ground this articulation within an acknowledgement of those rhetorical
and/or ideological goals. Articulated in such a fashion, these genres would remain
transparently discursive and open to revision, re-articulation, and critique.
The Hip-hopsploitation Films as Genre
At this point, I can return to the two approaches to the hip-hopsploitation films I
introduced earlier—the textual and the intentional—as I begin to define hiphopsploitation as a genre. In accordance with the articulated genre theory outlined above,
I first need to anchor my definition of genre within a particular rhetorical framework—
what do I want to accomplish by articulating the hip-hopsploitation genre? As already
stated in the introduction, the overarching goal of my dissertation is to examine the way
that hip-hop was being constructed as went from being a Bronx-based subculture to a
national phenomenon. The hip-hopsploitation films, as a genre, offer me a set of media
texts that, by representing hip-hop, also worked to articulate it in particular ways to a
51
newly expanded audience: “mainstream” American. Whereas hip-hop prior to these
films had largely circulated within smaller subcultural arenas, most often those connected
to the Bronx or New York’s other boroughs, these films offered one of the first times that
representations of hip-hop were being circulated to a national audience. Thus reading
the way these films articulated hip-hop gives us some sense of how hip-hop was being
constructed at this particular point in time.
Before continuing with an explanation of why the hip-hopsploitation genre is a
particularly important set of texts for doing this, I want to anchor my general approach of
reading cultural construction through media text by turning to similarities in media
scholar Lynn Spigel’s study of television. In her book, Make Room for TV, Spigel
explores the way that TV was “domesticated” and introduced into the American home by
various media, namely women’s magazines. In justifying her approach she writes:
By looking at these media and the representations they distributed, we can see
how the idea of television and its place in the home was circulated to the public.
Popular media ascribed meanings to television and advised the public on ways to
use it. While the media discourses do not directly reflect how people responded
to television, they do reveal an intertextual context—a group of interconnected
texts—through which people might have made sense of television and its place in
everyday life. (Spigel 2)
My project proposes do the same with hip-hop. Since these films represent one of the
first times images of hip-hop were being distributed to the public on a national scale, they
offer an opportunity for us to see how the idea of “hip-hop” may have been constructed
for people. It’s important, however, to acknowledge as Spigel does that these mediated
representations don’t necessarily reflect how people actually made sense of hip-hop.
Nevertheless, mapping the representations does offer us one discursively constructed
example of how people may have made meaning out of hip-hop. As Spigel again writes:
[media] give us a clue into an imaginary popular culture—that is, they tell us what
various media institutions assumed about the public’s concerns and desires….
Again, we should remember that these popular representations of television [or
hip-hop] do not directly reflect the public’s response to the new medium [or
cultural form]. Instead, they begin to reveal a general set of discursive rules that
were formed for thinking about television [or hip-hop] in its early period. (Spigel
8-9)
52
What the hip-hopsploitation films give us then, is a kind of “imaginary hip-hop
culture,” not a picture of some actual hip-hop. To reiterate this important point, my
dissertation does not purport to talk about some “real” or “authentic” hip-hop—nor does
it argue that such a thing does or does not exists—rather, it’s concerned with charting the
way that hip-hop was articulated through popular cultural texts, namely the 1980s hiphopsploitation films. Similarly, the comparison I make at the end of this chapter is
between two articulations of hip-hop—two discursively constituted representations—that
have no-necessary connection to their own constitutive parts or to any “real” hip-hop
culture. What I hope to explore by making this comparison are the political, social, and
cultural implications of the persistent dominance of one articulation of hip-hop—hip-hop
as rap music culture—over another possible articulation—hip-hop as a set of cultural
practices.
The Relevance of Exploitation
At this point, it would seem that my goal of using the hip-hopsploitation films to
illuminate how people might have made sense of hip-hop could just as easily be carried
out without needing to turn to genre. Defining the hip-hopsploitation films as a genre,
while not necessary to my argument, nevertheless supports my larger argument by
contextualizing these films more solidly within the tradition of exploitation genre films.
Connecting the hip-hopsploitation films to other exploitation genres serves an important
rhetorical function given, as I’ll elaborate on shortly, the unique way that exploitation
films connect audiences with current social issues. To return to a point made earlier in
the chapter, one of the principle reasons for choosing to describe this group of films as
hip-hopsploitation is precisely because it locates them as exploitation films. While it’s
possible to define hip-hopsploition as a subgenre of exploitation films based on the
similarities or parallels evident between it and other exploitation genres, I choose to
53
instead forego this more textual or aesthetic set of criteria in favor of the rhetorical
8
justification I’ve already begun to outline.
The Exploitation Film Model
Exploitation films are not always considered a genre. At the root of this is the
unique set of criteria that bound the exploitation film as a kind of movie. Most often, as
I’ve explained above, genre criteria arise from a set of textual or aesthetic characteristic
or from the discursive practices of audiences and industries as they work to group
“similar” films together for particular purposes. Exploitation films, however, fall
somewhere outside of either of these modes of genrefication, or perhaps between them.
This is primarily because an exploitation film is one that utilizes a particular model of
production that has been defined by exploitation on several simultaneous levels. Several
8
There are some interesting similarities between the trajectory taken by the hiphopsploitation genre and the one taken by blaxploitation. While a sustained exploration
of these similarities could perhaps fill its own chapter or essay, I will briefly outline one
here. Both the hip-hopsploitation (as I delineate it) and blaxploitation genres were
precipitated by the success, critical or popular, of independently produced films that go
on to serve as de-facto prototypes. For blaxploitation, the most obvious of these films is
Sweet Sweetback’s Baaadassss Song (Clark 152). Produced almost entirely outside the
studio system in 1971 by Melvin Van Peebles, the film features many of the tropes of
blaxploitation that would later be taken up as definitive criteria, namely a strong black
character that, for some reason or another, must oppose the white man who is frequently
oppressing the larger black community. Though Sweetback was made by an AfricanAmerican man, funded primarily by African-American sources, and it’s low-budget was
a function of necessity rather than economic calculation, Sweetback eventually served as
a model for later blaxploitation films more frequently produced by whites with white
funding.
Similarly, the hip-hopsploitation film genre can be traced back to a composite of
Wild Style and Style Wars (for a description see the Appendix). Though both were also
independently produced, many of the elements found in these two films would become
tropes taken up in the subsequent glut of hip-hopsploitation films. One particularly good
example of this is the graffiti plot line in Beat Street, which is transparently modeled on
the Cap vs. the graffiti-community conflict in Style Wars. Similarly, the orientation of
later hip-hopsploitation films towards some kind of community or group empowerment
finds a predecessor in Style Wars and especially Wild Style. The final sequence of Beat
Street discussed in the next chapter is once again clearly modeled on the community
celebration at the end of Wild Style. In both films, the celebration serves as a way for the
protagonist to resolve some deep inner-conflict as well as an occasion to mend his
damaged romantic relationship. While a continued exploration of these similarities
would no doubt yield interesting insight into the hip-hopsploitation films, such an
exploration does not fit within the limits of this chapter or project.
54
scholars of exploitation films have noted (see Clark; Doherty) that the term has its origins
within the film industry’s use of the word “exploitation” as synonymous with the
advertising, marketing, and public relations departments, their staff, and their activities
during the Hollywood boom years of the 20s and 30s. Yet as Thomas Doherty writes,
“the modern sense of the term as a pejorative description for a special kind of motion
picture (‘the exploitation film’) is more recent. In 1946, the show business bible Variety
spoke of ‘exploitation pictures’ as ‘films with some timely or currently controversial
subject which can be exploited, capitalized on, in publicity and advertising’” (Doherty 6).
While this is clearly a kind of film, the definitive characteristics seem most closely tied to
the production model followed by the films creators.
9
Whereas this term may have been new, even tentative in 1946, it didn’t take long
for it to become codified:
In 1956, ten years after its initial comments on the “exploitation picture,” Variety
submitted an authoritative definition, revised and updated, for the “so-called
exploitation pictures”: “These are low-budget films based on controversial and
timely subjects that made newspaper headlines. In the main these pictures appeal
to ‘uncontrolled’ juveniles and ‘undersirables.’” Together, these three elements—
controversial content, bare-bones budgets, and demographic targeting—remain
characteristic of any exploitation movie, whether the scandalous material is aimed
at “adults” (“sexploitation”), African Americans (“blaxploitation”), or gorehounds
(“axploitation”). (Doherty 9).
Though not always characterized as a genre in and of itself, it’s clear from Doherty’s
quote above that through its inclusion of established genres like blaxploitation or
axploitation, exploitation films become at minimum, connected to genre as some kind of
larger category. For example, we can discuss the blaxploitation genre as an exploitation
genre. Exploitation then is a way to at least categorize genres. However once recognized
as a classificatory term, there is nothing to stop it from being recognized as a genre itself.
Since generic categories are not determined by characteristics within the individual films
9
Doherty points to the use of quotation marks around the “the exploitation film” in
Variety’s article as proof that the term was potentially unfamiliar within the film industry
at the time (6).
55
constituting the genre—as I’ve shown in my treatment of genre theory above—genre is
revealed as a rhetorical strategy, a means of categorization without any inherent or
predefined structure. Further, a film classified as part of one genre by a particular scholar
or critic can just as easily be classified as part of another genre. As such, the term
“exploitation” can serve to describe a meta-generic category encompassing more specific
genres, or as a generic category itself. Ultimately the distinction is meaningless within a
genre theory that recognizes genre as rhetorically and discursively articulated.
Consequently, for the purpose of my argument, I will treat the exploitation films as a
genre.
The Function of Exploitation Films
There is an important social function lurking beneath the exploitation films, and
one that is crucial to my argument for the hip-hopsploitation films as an exploitation
genre. In his work on exploitation films, film scholar Randall Clark argues that the
exploitation films, more than other films, helps audiences make sense of social issues. In
some ways, this argument is prefigured by the definition itself, where exploitation films
are those that rely on controversial subject matter. As Clark writes:
The individual genres of exploitation films usually correspond directly to social
trends, so that when juvenile delinquency was on the rise in the 1950s, so were
exploitation films about juvenile delinquents, and when motorcycle gangs
terrorized the nation in the 1960s, there were dozens of films about them. What
the exploitation picture seems to do is provide the audience with a means of
satisfying its curiosity about a well-publicized event, but allowing the audience to
experience the vent vicariously…. If the appeal of all motion pictures is that they
allow the audience briefly to live in a fantasy world, the appeal of exploitation
pictures is that they allow the audience to briefly live in an imaginary version of
the real world. In the former, one might escape from the problems of society; in
the latter, one might safely confront them. (Clark 9)
What the exploitation does then, according to Clark, is create a safe space for the
audience to make sense of some new or problematic piece of culture. To support his
argument, Clark draws on the work of foundational film theorists like Hugo Munsterberg
and Siegfried Kracauer, and the parallels found in their respective theories of “voluntary
attentions” and wish-fulfillment through filmic dream states. According to Clark’s
56
reading of Munsterberg, “the audience’s voluntary attention is dictated by ‘our personal
interests, or own idea(s).’ Exploitation films exist to appease the inquisitive… natures of
the audience, to show them the things that they might not experience in real life… but
about which they have developed a compelling curiosity” (Clark 166-67).
Kracauer, clearly drawing on psychoanalysis, sees films as allowing the audience
to experience a sublimated desire, a kind of wish-fulfillment through a simulated dream
state. Clark sees this as particularly true for exploitation films:
Kracauer’s criticisms may be applied directly to exploitation films. These are
films that unquestionably allow their audiences to fulfill daydreams, as they
satisfy an intellectual curiosity about activities and events that the audience can
never experience in their own lives. Indeed, what Kracauer refers to as dreams
might not be entirely removed from what Munsterberg refers to as voluntary
attentions; in both cases, the films are allowing the audiences to satisfy an
intellectual curiosity about something that they find intriguing but would not
experience in real life. (Clark 172)
In applying both Munsterberg and Kracauer to exploitation films, Clark arrives at a clear
explanation for their function. More than other types of films, exploitation films allow
audiences the opportunity to safely experience and thus resolve some aspect of social or
cultural life that they find troubling or interesting. As Clark continues:
Kracauer sees the need for film to depict the society around it; exploitation films
undeniably do just that. In fact, exploitation films, with their need to exploit
public concerns about topical issues, might be even more likely to reflect society
than mainstream cinema. Admittedly, exploitation films present an exaggerated
and not totally realistic view of society, but they do exist in direct response to it.
Clark 172)
The similarities between Clark and Spigel are plain; Exploitation films appear to
be exemplary texts for reading how society may have been making sense out of a
particular cultural artifact, item, or issue. Both Spigel and Clark clearly state that this is
undoubtedly an exaggerated or “imaginary culture” that is being constituted by the texts,
however it is in the safe space of that imaginary culture that people are able to make
sense of the things that bother them. As a result, the hip-hopsploitation films, if we are to
understand them as exploitation films, are exemplary texts for examining how people
may have been making sense of hip-hop as it emerged from the Bronx and onto a national
57
stage. In the words of Melvin Donalson, “More than any other medium, Hollywood
movies introduced mainstream American to hip-hop culture in the 1980s” (Donalson 7).
Delimiting Hip-hopsploitation
Before continuing with an examination of how the hip-hopsploitation films
represented and thus articulated hip-hop, I must make the final step in my discussion of
genre by showing that the hip-hopsploitation films constitute a genre, and more
specifically, an exploitation genre. Explaining my choice of these eleven films—Wild
Style (1982), Style Wars (1983), Breakin’ (1984), Beat Street (1984), Breakin’ 2: Electric
Boogaloo (1984), Body Rock (1984), Rappin’ (1985), Krush Groove (1985), Delivery
Boys (1985), Fast Forward (1985), and Turk 182 (1985)—as comprising the hiphopsploitation genre corpus is simple. Since my construction of the hip-hopsploitation
genre is meant to offer a set of text through which people might have made sense of hiphop as it transitioned from a Bronx subculture to a national phenomenon, my criteria are
few.
First, I am interested in films that are about some element of hip-hop, whether
literally—as in breaking, graffiti, DJing, and MCing/rapping—or more generally
speaking. This is different from films that contain some element of hip-hop, such as a
soundtrack influenced by hip-hop, and even a hip-hop aesthetic. Rather, the films must
in some way attempt to function as a way of representing hip-hop to its audience. In this
way, I exclude films like Flashdance (1983) or Footloose (1984); though both are about
dance, and include scenes involving breaking, the films aren’t about breaking. I also
exclude films like Disorderlies (1987) and Tougher than Leather (1988), which both
serve as filmic vehicles for rap groups (the Fat Boys and Run-DMC respectively) and
feature soundtracks and aesthetics heavily influenced by hip-hop, but are similarly not
explicitly about it.
Second, the films must have been made during hip-hop’s emergence into
mainstream culture. While there are no firm dates for this (or at least I won’t purport to
58
have the authority to name them), this undoubtedly occurred in the late-1970s to mid1980s. During that time graffiti, breaking, DJing and rapping all found their own
moments in the national spotlight, whether it was inclusion of breakers in the opening of
the 1984 LA Olympic games and in Ronald Reagan’s second inauguration, the public
controversy surrounding graffiti as art (even high art) or vandalism, or the release of hit
singles like “Rapper’s Delight” (1979), The Message” (1982), “Rockit” (1983) or “It’s
Like That/Sucker MCs” (1983). Thus, for the purposes of my study, I limit the hiphopsploitation genre to films that were made within this time period. As a result, I
exclude film like Juice (1992), CB-4 (1993), Fear of a Black Hat (1994), Honey (2003),
or You Got Served (2004), to name only a few. While these films all deal overtly with
aspects of hip-hop culture, they are made at a point when hip-hop had already entered
10
into the mainstream consciousness of America.
Utilizing these two criteria, I’m left
with the eleven hip-hopsploitation films listed above. All of them are about elements of
11
hip-hop to some degree or another, and all of them are made in the early to mid-1980s.
Since these criteria are linked to a specific rhetorical purpose rather than aesthetic or
textual form, I’m also able to include a documentary film like Style Wars within the hiphopsploitation genre. Having thus offered a rational for the composition of the hiphopsploitation genre corpus, I will now explain why hip-hopsploitation is an exploitation
genre.
10
I also exclude a film like Big Fun In The Big Town (1986), the Dutch documentary
about hip-hop, since it was not made for the US audience and I have no information
about when it might have been released in English.
11
Two films could arguably be said not to be about hip-hop culture: Fast Forward and
Turk 182. The former because, while it is explicitly about dancing and the NY dance
scene, it features very little actual hip-hop dance. The latter because, while ostensibly a
film about graffiti (the film’s poster certainly implies this), it again contains very little in
the way of graffiti that could be recognized as part of hip-hop culture. Nevertheless, my
choice to include both of these in the genre is due to the way that they both purport to be
about some element of hip-hop, whether they actually are or not, and the precedent set by
other scholars writing on hip-hop films in the 1980s (see Chang; Donalson).
59
The Exploitation in Hip-hopsploitation
With both a definition of the exploitation genre and a body of hip-hopsploitation
films in mind, I can now frame the hip-hopsploitation films as an exploitation genre. To
repeat Doherty’s definition:
As a production strategy, the 1950s exploitation formula typically had three
elements: (1) controversial, bizarre, or timely subject matter amenable to wild
promotion (‘exploitation’ potential in its original sense); (2) a substandard budget;
and (3) a teenage audience. Movies of this ilk are triply exploitative,
simultaneously exploiting sensational happenings (for story value), their notoriety
(for publicity value), and their teenage participants (for box office value).
(Doherty 7)
As a genre, the hip-hopsploitation films meet all three of these requirements. First, their
subject matter exploits a particularly timely subject: hip-hop. This is true in both the
general and specific sense. Generally speaking, as I’ve already argued, hip-hop was
undergoing a transformation from a largely Bronx-based subculture to part of national
mainstream culture. In her study of television’s early years, Spigel suggests that the
introduction of any new cultural artifact is bound to cause anxiety as people struggle to
make sense of them and integrate the new items into their lives (Spigel 2). While Spigel
is speaking more specifically about media technologies, this holds true for forms of
cultural as well.
12
As a result, we can understand hip-hop as a subject that, in the early to
mid-1980s, may have been weighing on peoples’ minds as an emerging and largely
unfamiliar cultural form.
This is also valid for the specific story-lines within the hip-hopsploitation films as
well. As I will discuss further in a moment, the vast majority of the hip-hopsploitation
films focus on breaking and graffiti. While rap music has certainly been a source of
controversy during the last 10 years, owing in no small part to its representations of
homophobic and misogynistic hyper-masculinity, during the 70s and 80s, the two
12
What’s more, in Chapter 4 I also make the argument that hip-hop culture functions
analogously to media technologies and can be read as media technologies.
60
controversial aspects of hip-hop were breaking and graffiti. Style Wars explicitly depicts
the controversial nature of graffiti as it weaves together interviews with graffiti-writers
and members of the NY City government, including the mayor Ed Koch himself, as they
13
discuss the Transit Authority’s war on graffiti.
As the narrator states in the beginning
of the film, “Graffiti is a tradition, passed down from one youthful generation to the next.
To some it’s art. To most people however, it is a plague that never ends; a symbol that
we’ve lost control.” The film also captures a number of angry responses to graffiti on the
part of ordinary citizens. According to the film’s director, Tony Silver, Style Wars was
only played once on NY public television because it evoked such strong reactions in
viewers ("Style Wars Dvd Press Kit" 14), graffiti was simply too controversial. This is
also evident in plot aspects of Wild Style, Beat Street, and Turk 182, the other three films
to feature graffiti. All three of them feature conflict between graf-writers and figures of
authority, whether they be parents, older siblings, the police, transit authority official, or
even the mayor in the case of Turk 182.
Breaking underwent a similar moment of public crisis during the early to mid1980s. With the explosion of media attention on breaking after the cameo appearance of
Rock Steady Crew members on Flashdance, as well as the other major events named
above, breaking took off across the US. Not only did breakers go on tour, but kids in
almost every state started breaking. But just as the so-called “breakdancing craze” swept
American youth, it also left room for a backlash in its wake. As shown in The Freshest
Kids, a documentary on the history of breaking, it got to the point where cities would ban
breaking in public spaces. The backlash grew even more acute when young suburbanite
kids, anxious to copy the movies they were seeing in the media, began sustaining serious
injuries while attempting to break. Like graffiti, the entry of breaking into mainstream
13
To quote the anti-graffiti campaign’s poster featuring two prominent boxers, “Take it
From the Champs, Graffiti is for Chumps: Make your mark in society, not on society.”
61
American became a source of controversy. Debate shifted to a discussion of whether it
was a dance, a public nuisance, or even a danger. In short, the emergence of hip-hop
culture and its constitutive elements, specifically breaking and graffiti, offered
exploitation film makers a potentially rich source of controversial material to mine for
story lines.
The hip-hopsploitation films also meet the requirements of the exploitation
production model on a financial level. On the whole, the films were made on
comparatively small budgets. Of the eleven, only Beat Street’s $10 million budget
resembled that of a major motion picture. Far more common were the low-budget and
hastily made films like Breakin’, its sequels, and Body Rock. As the headline of one
Variety review of Krush Groove read, “Schultz Lensed ‘Groove’ In 26 Days For
$3,000,000,” which Schultz himself bragged was a “very low budget for a musical”
(DiMauro). Several of the films were made for well under a million, for example Wild
Style and Style Wars, which were both produced for close to $250,000 each; and though I
was not able to find any information on the budget of Delivery Boys, the extremely poor
quality of the film and the fact that it was made by someone so completely outside of the
film industry (see Appendix A), lead me to believe it couldn’t have been made for much
more.
Finally, the audience of the hip-hopsploitation films also meets the requirements
of the exploitation genre outlined above by Doherty. The intended audience for the films
was quite clearly youth. In part, this stems from the perception that hip-hop culture itself
was a form of youth culture, making youth the logical target audience of the films. This
idea is also supported by the discourses surrounding the films themselves, most notably
the way that many of the films are talked about by those involved in their production.
One review of Wild Style, for example, characterizes hip-hop as the “activities of
society’s outcast youth” ("Wild Style").
62
Similarly, in discussing Beat Street, producer Harry Belafonte and director Stan
Lathan make several references to hip-hop as an expression of youth or kids, and of this
being a significant factor in their interest in making a film about hip-hop (Calloway
"Belafonte Rap on 'Beat Street'"; Calloway "Lathan Directs 'Beat Street'"). Sydney
Poitier, director of Fast Forward, makes a similar claim in his interview with the Chicago
Tribune, stating that “‘Fast Forward’ is the story of young people and their urge, desire
and need to leave their mark on time” (Thomas). It’s thus not surprising when many of
the reviews in Variety, for example, characterize the films’ audiences as “youngsters”
("Style Wars"), “teenage” ("Breakin'"), “youth” ("Fast Forward"), “younger” ("Rappin'";
"Body Rock"), and “underage” ("Krush Groove").
These audience characterizations aside, if we are to treat the representations of
hip-hop in the hip-hopsploitation film genre as helping to constitute a text that Americans
may have used to understand the emerging hip-hop culture, then we need to assume that
these films also reached, or were in some ways intended to reach, a wider audience than
simply youth. Though there is certainly evidence that the hip-hopsploitation films may
have been meant to appeal to a teenage or youth audience familiar with the subject, the
very exploitation model itself implies an audience that is instead unconnected to the
subject; if the exploitation film is meant, for example, to help society make sense of
youth delinquency, it would make little sense for the film’s audience to be delinquent
youth. In other words, despite the tendency of critics to conflate the youthful origins of
hip-hop with the youthfulness of an assumed audience, it’s also likely that these films did
in fact appeal to an adult audience unfamiliar with hip-hop.
Connected Critical Discourse
In addition to the way that the hip-hopsploitation films fit within the structure of
the exploitation genre, there is a convergence of critical discourses that articulate the
films in the hip-hopsploitation genre to exploitation. One notable example is in Jeff
Chang’s historical account of hip-hop, where, for the first time I’ve been able to locate,
63
these eleven films are grouped together under the same heading: “Hip-Hop Exploitation”
(Chang 191). Chang goes on to characterize the films as, “a wave of teen-targeted
exploitation flicks” (Chang 192). In Clark’s history of exploitation films, he makes a
similar articulation by first including several of the hip-hopsploitation films within the
sub-genre of popular music exploitation films. He notes that with the death of the rock’n
roll pictures, “some exploitation filmmakers turned their attentions to other types of
popular music, producing such films as Breakin’ (1984), [and] Rappin’ (1985)…” (Clark
71). He then later articulates the same films to blaxploitation, writing that, “Though the
blaxploitation film cycle more or less came to a close in the 1970s, the 1980s and 90s
have seen occasional attempts to revive the genre…. The popularity of black music in
the mid-1980s inspired the films Breakin’, Breakin’ 2: Electric Boogaloo (both 1984),
and Rappin’ (1985)” (Clark 161).
Such articulations are not only found in the historical accounts of the films, but in
the press coverage of the films at the times of their release. Several articles referred to
some combination of the films as a “genre” (Sinclair; Douglas; "Ebony Etchings";
Rogers), as films depicting hip-hop or “hip-hop films” ("Rappin'"; Hoberman "Their Big
Break"; "Breakin' 2 Electric Boogaloo"), “dance” or “breakdance films” or movies ("Beat
Street"; Hoberman "Alphabet Soup"; Canby "Growing up Misunderstood in Today's
America"), a “cycle of street-beat pictures” (Goldstein), and a “slew of youth dance
films” ("Fast Forward"). In grouping the films together, whether as a “genre” or other
unit of categorization, the press coverage of the films also helped to articulate them to
exploitation films. One example of this is the connection one article made to
“teensploitation” (Attanasio), while another pointed out the appearance in Delivery Boys
of real life porn star Kelly Nichols, who attempts to seduce one of the film’s protagonists
to prevent him from competing in a breaking tournament.
14
14
It’s also worth pointing out that Delivery Boys also features an interesting scene where
a doctor reminiscent of Nazi Dr. Mengele performs weird experiments on another one of
64
Certainly the most interesting of these is the Variety review of Krush Groove.
The reviewer writes, “given the outcry over porn and pop music, though, the picture does
offer an interesting footnote, introducing the underage audience to the basic dramatic
structure—if not content—of the average X-rated film” ("Krush Groove" 19). The
obvious critique here being that Krush Groove has about as much story as a porn movie.
While I don’t mean this to return me to a genre critique that buries itself within textual
characteristics, this critique mirrors the characterization of the films I made at the start of
this chapter as paracinematic. I think it’s safe, as a supplement to the genre justification
made above, to once again reiterate that the way that the hip-hopsploitation films tend to
fit the above critique; by and large they feature weak plots that give the audience a basic
thread to follow as they move from one exhibition of hip-hop to another. In this regard,
the films are not much different than blaxploitation, where the plots served to link action,
funk and soul music, and blackness, or pornography, where the thin plots provide some
cover for the various sex scenes that are the films’ primary draws. And, as I’ll conclude
this chapter with in a moment, the representations of hip-hop exhibited in these films are
important, for inter-textually they articulated a particular version of hip-hop in opposition
to the articulation now in ascendency.
The Hip-Hop in Hip-hopsploitation
Now that I’ve theorized the hip-hopsploitation films as a genre, I will conclude
this chapter with an overview of the way that the hip-hopsploitation films represented and
by extension articulated hip-hop culture at this critical moment in the 1980s when hiphop emerged in mainstream culture. While there is a fair degree of variation in the way
hip-hop is represented from film to film (see Appendix A for descriptions of individual
the protagonists, perhaps gesturing towards another exploitation sub-genre, the Nazi(s)exploitation films (in the vein of the 1974 films Ilsa, She Wolf of the SS).
65
films and their treatment in the press), when read intertextually as a genre, there does
emerge a surprisingly coherent set of generalized representations of hip-hop.
What emerges are two competing articulations of hip-hop, one that appears to be
dominant within the hip-hopsploitation film texts, especially the early ones, and a second
one that appears to be developing towards the end of the film cycle as a new, and
potentially alternative articulation. The primary, or early, representation of hip-hop in the
hip-hopsploitation films is one I label “hip-hop as a set of cultural practices,” where
breaking, graffiti, and early-DJing cohere as individual artistic/cultural practices under
the larger umbrella of hip-hop culture. The secondary, or later, representation of hip-hop
I label “hip-hop as rap music culture,” where MCing in the form of rapping becomes the
primary and definitive component of hip-hop. To each representation is also articulated a
set of secondary meanings and ideologies that shift the representational politics of hiphop in important ways.
Hip-Hop as a Set of Cultural Practices
As already noted in this chapter and elsewhere, nine of the eleven hiphopsploitation films either feature breaking or graffiti as the primary elements of hip-hop
or feature multiple elements as co-constitutive components. Only two films, Rappin’ and
Krush Groove feature MCing as the primary element of hip-hop. As a result, the
representation of hip-hop that begins to emerge from an intertextual reading of the hiphopsploitation films is a hip-hop defined through breaking, graffiti, and to a slightly
lesser degree DJing as, in the words of the narrator of Style Wars, “equally assertive
counterparts.”
15
15
Style Wars, along with Wild Style and Beat Street exemplify this
More specifically, the narrator says that graffiti writing, “has equally assertive
counterparts in rap music and breakdancing,” though I take issue with the choice of
words on the part of the narrator. First, breakdancing, as discussed in the introduction, is
not the preferred term of practitioners of breaking, but rather a form created externally
(some suggest by the media) as a way to discuss breaking or b-boying. Second, though
the narrator refers to is as rap music, over the course of the film, it becomes clear that the
rap music being depicted more accurately resembles the early forms of party-DJing
where the DJ was accompanies by one or more MC who served as a lyrical counterpart to
66
representation most of the films. Though each film seems to focus a little more on one of
the elements, they all nevertheless feature the other elements as equally important
components of hip-hop.
Wild Style, for example, focuses primarily on the struggle of one graffiti-writer
and his friends, with several supplementary sequences about the other elements woven
throughout the film. The film concludes with a large party in a park where the different
elements come together to celebrate as one big hip-hop community. While the party
exemplifies this understanding of hip-hop as a set of cultural practices, the protagonist
himself spells this out in the preceding scene. Rather than painting a mural for the party
that depicts only the graffiti artist and his struggles—his original idea for the piece—the
protagonist realizes that the point of the party is to bring the hip-hop community together
in a celebration of unity, not individuality. As a result, he paints a giant star that’s meant
to symbolize the way that everyone on stage, DJs, breakers, and rappers alike, are all
stars, not just the graffiti writer.
More common than this depiction of hip-hop as constituted by all of these
elements, however, are those films that focus on breaking as the central piece of hip-hop.
This is the case in Breakin’ and its sequel, Body Rock, Fast Forward, and Delivery Boys.
In all five of the films, breaking is the featured element, with graffiti playing a
supplementary role in several of the films. In all of these films, rap appears as only a
means of facilitating dance on the part of the characters. Both Breakin’ films, for
example, feature cameos by rapper Ice-T and his DJ Afrika Islam as performers at a local
club. And while both Wild Style and Style Wars seem most interested in graffiti, only
Turk 182 is solely about graffiti writing. When read intertextually, these depictions
the musical mixing. As already noted, I refer to this as DJing to distinguish it from the
latter form of MCing/rapping that itself included DJing as a subservient component of the
music. Thus my use of the quote above to refer to DJing rather than “rap music” is
justified as a matter of terminological specificity.
67
reveal an early understanding of hip-hop that articulated it primarily to graffiti and
breaking as a set of cultural practice.
Politics of Representation in Hip-Hop as a Set of
Cultural Practices
Not only is it important to see that the hip-hopsploitation films represented hiphop as a set of cultural practices linked primarily to breaking and graffiti, but also that in
doing so, they articulated hip-hop to a number of other important political and ideological
components. It is not just important to notice what is being done as hip-hop—the
elements—but who is doing them and for what reasons. In one of the only prolonged
discussions of the films in either film or hip-hop studies texts, film historian Melvin
Donalson writes, “the movies, for various reasons, presented hip hop as a multi-ethnic
and multiracial youth movement during its earliest years” (Donalson 23). This is most
obviously scene in the presumed racial identities of the protagonists in each film. The
protagonist in Wild Style, Lee Quinones, is depicted as Latino. His principle supporting
actors are one white male graffiti artist, a Latina female graffiti artist, and a black former
graffiti artist turned club promoter.
In Style Wars, the graffiti artists, breakers, DJs and MCs are a mix of
predominantly Latino and black, however a substantial number of them are also white—
arguably a third of the graffiti artists depicted are white. In Beat Street, of five people
that make up the main “crew,” three are black, one is Puerto Rican, and one is a white
guy that jokes about being Puerto Rican. The trio of principle dancers in the Breakin’
series is made up of a black male, a Latino male, and a white female, with a racially
diverse cast of characters playing the rival dance crew and others in the hip-hop scene.
This is true of Delivery Boys, Body Rock, and Fast Forward as well—in all three, blacks,
Latinos, and whites seem to mix as members of the dance crews. Turk 182 is perhaps the
outlier in that it features an almost exclusively white cast of characters, with only a
68
couple of black or Latino extras filling in, though tellingly, they are the ones that
introduce the protagonist to the idea of graffiti.
While Donalson sees these films as clearly depicting a racially diverse hip-hop
culture, he is more critical about the gender politics of the films. While the films
certainly do not depict hip-hop as gender neutral or equitable, I would nevertheless argue
that the films, especially those depicting this earlier articulation of hip-hop, presented
hip-hop in much less restrictively sexist and hyper-masculine terms than the later
articulation of hip-hop to rap music culture. As already noted, both Wild Style and the
Breakin’ films contain primary characters that are women. In Wild Style, the love
interest of the protagonist is a female graffiti artist. Though the film occasionally defines
her by her role as his love interest, she also maintains a rather high degree of
individuality and subjectivity within the film. At various points she is even depicted as a
more successful graffiti artist than the protagonist, and it is her scathing critique of his
work at the end of the film that helps him realize he needs to change the idea of his
mural.
The Breakin’ series features a white woman as a primary character and member
of the central breaking crew. In fact, it is only through her participation in the dance
crew that they are able to defeat the rival crew (which, not unrelated, is originally
dominant in the film because it contains a female dancer). It should also be noted that,
while certainly not as good as the two male leads (having more to do with the skills of the
actress than the story itself), she nevertheless avoids the stereotypically “feminine” dance
16
rolls and dances as an equal member of the crew.
16
Finally, the dance crew in Fast
It’s also interesting to note that Breakin’ also features a black gay man who serves as
the bridge between the female lead’s world of formal dance and the male leads’ world of
street dance by introducing them. In noting that the two “street” dancers are old friends
of his and offering to take the female lead to meet them, the gay man claims a certain
degree of belonging in the culture of breaking, if not hip-hop more generally, that would
seem unheard of in the articulation of hip-hop as rap music, which has become infamous
for its homophobia.
69
Forward features six women and two men. Though the two men seem to be the leaders,
there is a central scene in the film where the women rebel against their leadership after
one of the men cheats on his girlfriend, one of the female dancers, with a rich society girl
that hires them for a gig. Ultimately, the women overturn the typical script and the man
admits his culpability and offers to leave the crew if that will ease some of the tension
caused by his indiscretion. While not exactly a feminist moment, it is, like the others
listed above, significantly better than the way that gender is depicted within the later
articulation of hip-hop as rap music culture.
By featuring characters from a variety of racial backgrounds, and some of them
female, the hip-hopsploitation films not only articulate hip-hop to breaking and graffiti as
a set of cultural practices, but they also articulate it as a multiracial and at least
marginally more gender inclusive culture. This understanding of hip-hop is further
reflected in the press coverage of the films. Many of the reviews describe hip-hop as
“multi-racial” ("Style Wars"), “the domain of blacks and Latinos” ("Breakin'"), “an
explicit black-Latin synthesis” (Hoberman "Their Big Break"), “racially integrated”
(Canby "Film: 'Fast Forward,' by Poitier"), a “diverse community” ("Beat Street"), “a
global phenomena that transcends racial and cultural boundaries” (Calloway "Belafonte
Rap on 'Beat Street'"), and most amusingly, “a black-Hispanic-female rainbow coalition
that could conceivably defeat Ronald Reagan” (Hoberman "Alphabet Soup"). Other
reviews connect hip-hop to a more ambiguous “ethnic” culture (Calloway "'Breakin' 2- Is
Simply Fantastic Showing Adventurous Choreography"; "Beat Street"), as “Latin”
(Hoberman "Alphabet Soup"), and “not strictly black” ("Atlantic's Hip-Hop Soundtrack:
Crossover Eyed for 'Beat Street'"). In short, the films seem to have primarily been
articulating hip-hop as a multicultural and multiracial, semi-gender inclusive, set of
cultural practices cohering around breaking, graffiti, and party-DJing.
70
Hip-Hop as Rap Music Culture
While nine of the eleven films focused on some combination of breaking, graffiti,
and DJing, two of the later films, Rappin’ and Krush Groove, focused on rapping. The
first, Rappin’, contains some minor references to the other elements, namely in the form
of graffiti, Krush Groove, however, almost completely decontextualizes MCing from the
rest of the elements. Only DJing is presented in the film, though even there, it appears as
part of the back up for Run-DMC, not as an equal counterpart of hip-hop culture. This
represents a fairly significant shift away from the other films in this group. As Donalson
notes, whereas breaking and graffiti were the “popular phenomena” in filmic treatments
of hip-hop, “by the end of the 1980s rap would serve as hip hop’s major cinematic
element” (Donalson 9). As with the earlier articulation, the shift towards hip-hop as rap
music culture brought with it a corresponding socio-political shift.
Politics of Representation in Hip-Hop as Rap Music
Culture
More than any of the other films, both Rappin’ and Krush Groove portray hip-hop
culture as primarily the domain of black youth. While Rappin’ has a somewhat diverse
cast of characters, including a Latina love interest, the principle characters—protagonists
and antagonists—are all African-American. More importantly, it is only the AfricanAmerican characters that appear to be immersed in the world of rapping and hip-hop.
The racial uniformity in Krush Groove is even starker. Aside from a handful of
characters—including a biracial love interest in the form of pop icon Sheila E., a brief
cameo performance by rock-rap group Beastie Boys, and a completely undeveloped
white-Jewish business partner (real life Def Jam co-founder Rick Rubin)—the entire cast
of Krush Groove is African-American.
The gender politics of the two films is similarly flat. While each film features a
female love interest, neither one is active in or a part of hip-hop culture within the film.
In Rappin’, the love interest Dixie is never fully integrated into the rap/hip-hop scene,
71
despite holding down a day job at a local rap oriented record company. The only female
character to do much actual “rapping” is the protagonists grandmother, however the
absurdity and patent falsity of the scene prevent it from reading as a moment of female
empowerment within hip-hop culture. Similarly, in Krush Groove, Sheila E. makes an
attempt to rap during one of her shows. While certainly a passable “rap” in and of itself,
it remains unconvincing as a representation of a female rapper. This is namely because
Sheila E. retains too much recognition as a popular music star outside of the film for her
to do anything other than play herself within it. As a result, her rap comes across as
playing around rather than a genuine attempt to enter the world of rapping. What’s more,
it could be argued that the conflict between the two primary male protagonists over the
affections of Sheila E. tends to re-inscribe a rather sexist and patriarchal objectification of
women as the rightful property of men.
Though these two films hardly constitute a significant enough body of texts in
order to convincingly map the articulation of hip-hop as rap music culture, I want to point
to the body of hip-hop scholarship already in existence as additional texts about hip-hop.
As already discussed in the introduction, the tendency of authors working on hip-hop,
whether scholarly or lay, is to conflate hip-hop with rap music. In the process of
articulating hip-hop to rap music culture, these scholars and lay authors also tend to
articulate it to blackness. I also need only point to what is generally considered “common
knowledge,” which is the notion that rap music (which in most cases is also synonymous
with hip-hop) is a product of African-American culture. There are plenty of examples of
the way this discourse circulates within popular culture, but probably the most obvious is
the controversy surrounding white rapper Eminem, and repeated discussions over
whether he constituted a new Elvis Presley, appropriating and profiting off stolen black
culture. While I will cover the racial politics of this shift in articulation in more detail in
Chapter 6, my discussion of the representation politics of Beat Street in the following
chapter will also touch on the way race has been constructed in hip-hop.
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Conclusion
In first arguing for a new form of genre theory based in articulation theory, I’ve
been able to more effectively argue for the hip-hopsploitation films as an exploitation
genre. My purpose in doing so has been to argue that, intertextually, these films are a
unique window into how the American mainstream society may have made sense of hiphop as it emerged from a Bronx subculture to a national phenomenon. It is precisely the
status of these films as an exploitation genre that makes them so well suited to this kind
of analysis. As Clark and others have argued, the exploitation genre is inherently about
helping audiences make sense of difficult or unfamiliar cultural subject matter—
exploitation films are exploiting this very content and quality. In addition to critical and
press coverage of the films that discursively construct them as a genre and articulate them
to exploitation, the hip-hopsploitation films’ tendency to focus on breaking and graffiti—
which were both pressing public concerns during the late-1970s and early to mid1980s—make them more clearly identifiable as exploitation films.
This is not the only significance of the predomination of breaking and graffiti as
principle subjects within the films. In the final sections of this chapter, I’ve also
identified two competing articulations of hip-hop that come out of the way hip-hop is
represented in the hip-hopsploitation films. The first articulation, which emerges out of
nine of the eleven films, I call hip-hop as a set of practices, where hip-hop is articulated
to breaking, graffiti, and party-DJing as con-constitutive elements. Hip-hop as a set of
cultural practices also articulates hip-hop as multicultural and comparatively gender
inclusive. The second articulation, which begins to emerge towards the end of the genre
cycle and is only evident in two films, I call hip-hop as rap music culture. In this
articulation, hip-hop shifts away from being co-constituted by several elements and is
instead defined almost exclusively by rap music. While the other elements do not
disappear in this later articulation, they themselves become determined by rap as part of
its ancillary music culture.
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Along with this shift comes a change in the racial and gender politics of hip-hop;
hip-hop as rap music becomes articulated almost exclusively to blackness as a form of
African-American popular culture. As I’ll begin to argue in Chapter 6, the articulation of
hip-hop to blackness is not ideologically neutral, but rather carries with it significant
implications for racial politics in the US. However before looking at the racial and
cultural factors behind this shift, I will probe the technological, medial, and material
conditions that may have contributed to this shift in Chapters 4 and 5. In the next chapter,
Chapter 3, I use a close reading of Beat Street to paint a more detailed picture of the
articulation of hip-hop to breaking, graffiti, and early-DJing as a set of cultural practices,
paying particular attention to representations of gender, race, class, and sexuality.
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CHAPTER 3:
AUTHENTICITY DISCOURSE AND THE POLITICS OF REPRESENTATION
Introduction
Having outlined the hip-hopsploitation films as a genre in the previous chapter,
this chapter will use one of the films, Beat Street, as a case study. Such an extended
close reading of the film is not only necessary as a means of deepening my analysis of the
genre itself, but it also offers a more detailed picture of the earlier articulation of hip-hop
as a set of cultural practices. While all of the hip-hopsploitation films similarly work to
exploit the emerging culture of hip-hop and aid in the mainstream and commercial
appropriation of the subculture, Beat Street is unique in two ways. First, as noted in the
previous chapter, Beat Street had the largest budget of the hip-hopsploitation films.
Second, despite being a highly commercial film, it nevertheless claims to present an
1
“authentic” and non-exploitative representation of hip-hop. This is most evident in the
discourse of authenticity put forth by the film’s director and producer and circulated in
the press—namely the black press. This positional discourse seems aimed at
differentiating it from the previously released Breakin’, a low-budget exploitation film,
and is even present in the film itself. It’s arguable that the discourse is also meant to
connect it to Wild Style more explicitly than the narrative itself already does. This
tension between authenticity and mainstream commodification is most fully embodied by
Beat Street, setting it apart from the other hip-hopsploitation films, and making it a
perfect candidate for a more detailed analysis of the way the hip-hopsploitation films
represented and thus articulated hip-hop as it began moving from sub-culture to
mainstream culture in the mid-1980s.
1
I use this term because it is used as part of the marketing of the film and recurs in the
press coverage.
75
In addition to exploring subcultural authenticity and mainstream appropriation,
this chapter is a case study for examining in more detail the historical moment of hip-hop
represented by the hip-hopsploitation films, as well as the ideological and politicocultural positions that these representations mobilized, reproduced, and ultimately
articulated to hip-hop. Specifically, it focuses on the representations of race, class,
gender, and sexuality both within and about Beat Street, and the significance of these
representations for the shifting articulation of hip-hop. By focusing on the most
“mainstream” of the films, this chapter highlights the early, largely failed, commercial
articulation of hip-hop to breaking, graffiti, and DJing as a set of cultural practices. As
I’ll show in more detail, this early articulation of hip-hop was much less narrowly or
simplistically defined than the later, more successful, articulation of hip-hop to MCing in
the form of rap music culture, and even more specifically, to the form of rap music
known as “gangsta” rap.
Backstory
Beat Street began production in December of 1983, amidst this flurry of media
attention, and was released on June 8, 1984. Although the production value of the film
2
was much higher than that of Breakin’, reflecting the larger $10 million budget
(Calloway "Belafonte Rap on 'Beat Street'" 19), Beat Street was unable to reap the same
type of success as its predecessor. Beat Street was also produced by the larger Orion
Pictures, a semi-major studio, leading prominent Village Voice critic J. Hoberman to
label it the “first ‘real’ Hollywood movie about breaking, rapping, scratching and
writing” (Hoberman "Their Big Break" 53). The film was made with African-American
talent both in front of and behind the camera. Harry Belafonte, one of the few AfricanAmericans working within Hollywood during the civil rights era, produced the film and
2
Breakin’, though it began production in February of 1984, after Beat Street, was hurried
through production and released in May, one month prior to the June release of Beat
Street.
76
Stan Lathan, the rare African-American director working in television in the 70s and 80s
(Maslin C12), directed it, among other African-Americans involved in the film’s
production. The film featured several prominent hip-hop artists along with its cast of
actors, including the Rock Steady Crew, the NYC Breakers, Afrika Bambaataa and the
3
Soul Sonic Force, Grand Master Melle Mel and the Furious Five, and Jazzy Jay.
The film has four primary protagonists, brothers Kenny (Guy Davis) and Lee
(Robert Taylor), Ramon (John Chardiet), and Tracy (Rae Dawn Chong). Kenny is an
aspiring DJ who wants to move from playing house parties to clubs. Along the way he
meets Tracy, a City College of New York student working on choreographing a dance
performance—presumably as part of her thesis—and the two begin a sort-of romance.
Lee, Kenny’s younger brother, is a B-boy with the Beat Street Breakers, who are
themselves locked into a rivalry with another B-boy crew. Finally, Ramon, aka “Ramo,”
is a graffiti writer who’s trapped between a father who disapproves of what Ramon sees
as his art, the need to provide for his girlfriend, Carmen, and their baby son, and his own
4
passion for “bombing” trains. Tension further builds when Ramo’s “burners” are
defaced by an unknown graffiti artist going by the tag “Spit.”
These four threads provide a well-rounded picture of hip-hop, covering B-boying,
5
graffiti, DJing and MCing , and are brought together in the final sequence of the film.
3
As Chang writes, “On paper, this was the historical equivalent of landing Louis
Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Billie Holiday, the Nicholas Brothers, Honi Coles, and
Cholly Atkins and Whitey’s International Hoppers for a feature film about jazz”
(192).Jeff Chang, Can't Stop, Won't Stop : A History of the Hip-Hop Generation, 1st ed.
(New York: St. Martin's Press, 2005) 192.
4
A burner is a larger graffiti painting covering a significant portion of a train, and
generally includes more than a simple rendering of the artist’s name. Contrasted to this
are the “tag,” with is simply the name of the artist written in Sharpee or spray paint, and
the “bomb,” a full subway car mural.
5
Kenny often times raps along with his sets, especially in the final sequence of the film.
Again, in his character, it is easy to see the tendency to collapse DJing and MCing
together.
77
Ramo, having finally decided to get a job in order to support his girlfriend and son, sees a
white train, and is tempted into one last trip to the yards. During this late night bombing,
Ramo encounters Spit, a disheveled white graffiti artist. The two fight on the tracks and
before Kenny can intervene, both Ramo and Spit are killed by the third rail. The death of
Ramo brings the remaining characters together for a memorial celebration that features
both of the B-boy crews, Tracy’s dance troupe, as well as a gospel choir, and Grand
Master Melle Mel. The message of the performance is overwhelmingly one of
community unity through hip-hop. Yet even as it makes the attempt to galvanize the
community through this final performance, the film is simultaneously selling the
subculture out for mainstream consumption.
“Subculture”
This tension between resistance and assimilation is a key characteristic of
subcultures. As Hebdige points out in Subculture, “each subculture moves through a
cycle of resistance and defusion [sic]” (Hebdige 130). Kellner points out that Hebdige
“presents rock music styles and youth culture both as forms of refusal and as commerical
[sic] modes of incorporation of subcultural resistance into the dominant consumer
culture” (Kellner 40). In looking at the convergence of hip-hop and mainstream media
that these films represent, we can see that the hip-hopsploitation films largely reflect this
incorporation. Beat Street stands out from the rest, however, in that even as it serves to
incorporate hip-hop into the mainstream consumer culture, it also attempts to capture
some of hip-hop’s resistance through this message of community unity through hip-hop
(as epitomized in the celebration scene). Thus Beat Street finds itself both reifying
dominant politico-cultural and ideological representations of gender, sexuality, race,
class, and hip-hop as it simultaneously introduces alternate and resistant readings of these
same ideologies.
That this is the case with Beat Street should not be surprising, however. Stuart
Hall reminds us that, “by definition, black popular culture is a contradictory space” (Hall
78
6
"What Is This 'Black' in Black Popular Culture?" 470). This makes even more
problematic the tendency of most scholars to dismiss Beat Street, as well as the other hiphopsploitation films, as merely exploitative. Hall goes further, warning of the trap posed
by simple binaries:
[Black popular culture] is a site of strategic contestation. But it can never be
simplified or explained in terms of the simple binary oppositions that are still
habitually used to map it out; high and low; resistance versus incorporation;
authentic versus inauthentic, experiential versus formal; opposition versus
homogenization. There are always positions to be won in popular culture, but no
struggle can capture popular culture itself for our side or theirs. (Hall "What Is
This 'Black' in Black Popular Culture?" 470)
In other words, it is a mistake to ignore the contradictory nature of the hip-hopsploitation
films by focusing either on their resistance or incorporation. Beat Street is not simply the
mainstream commodification of hip-hop culture, but a “site of strategic contestation”
where the politics of representation is negotiated. Here Hall seems to suggest a dialectic
relationship between resistance and incorporation, authenticity and commodification, that
in the end reifies these binaries more than it deconstructs them. Yet it is equally viable to
see this as dialogic, where this negotiation is indicative of a slippery, often ruptured,
relationship between these various positions. Beat Street, then, avoids these binaries that
Hall identifies as typical of conceptions of black popular culture through this process of
negotiation. What’s more, neither “strategic contestation” nor negotiation necessarily
engender only two positions, but in fact, can include multiple—even contradictory—
positions, representations, and sites of tension that further elide these traditional binaries.
For representation is important, and film is a particularly potent medium of
representation. S. Craig Watkins points out that, “the mimetic qualities of cinema enable
filmmakers to reconstruct their social world in ways that can work either to interrogate or
6
It’s important to note that when Hall refers to “black popular culture,” he is very
specific about what he means by “black.” He is not reducing culture to a product of race,
but rather discussing a particular subject position that he calls black. For Hall, black
refers to the subject position of the non-white, post-colonial, diasporic Other.
79
to legitimate dominant social, economic, and political relationships” (Representing 138).
Any analysis that seeks to uncover or at least call attention to the ideological positions
being mobilized by a film, as in the case of Beat Street here, must then contend with
these representations. As Michael Ryan and Douglas Kellner note:
[T]he representation of the social world is political and [the] choice of modes of
representation instantiates differing political positions toward it. Indeed, every
camera position, every scene composition, every editing decision, and every
narrative choice involves a representational strategy that embeds various interests
and desires. No aspect of film merely reveals or depicts ‘reality.’ Rather, films
construct the social world in very specific ways. (Ryan and Kellner (Camera
Politica, 1988) as quoted in Watkins Representing 138)
An analysis of the representational politics of Beat Street, then, can help illuminate this
constructed nature of the social order. In saying this I don’t mean to suggest that this is an
entirely top down construction, for it is also true that there is an understanding and
“recognition by black youth [and those involved in hip-hop] that representational
practices are an important and necessary mode of politics and pleasure” (Watkins
Representing 6). This then returns us once more to Hall’s point that the politics of
representation is itself a contested space with many layers of meaning-making negotiated
7
by those represented, those creating the representations, and those viewing them. The
representations of gender in Beat Street offer a rich starting point for examining these
different layers.
Representing Gender
In her critique of Hebdige, Angela McRobbie argues that his consideration of “the
processes of reaction and incorporation accompanying the subcultural leap into the
limelight of the popular press and media . . . fails to recognize that these are genderspecific processes” (McRobbie "Settling Accounts with Subcultures: A Feminist
Critique" 119). This is as much the case with hip-hop as it is with punk, the musical
7
Brian Goedde’s “Represent, Represent” (unpublished) does an excellent job of looking
at this politics of representation in terms of the difficult tension between the black hip
hop artist and the white consumer and critic.
80
subculture highlighted by Hebdige’s book. Current representations of gender and
sexuality within hip-hop are problematic. Not only because they exploit a heterosexist
and misogynistic masculinity and passive, objectified and overly-sexualized femininity,
but also for their erasure of previous representations of gender and sexuality within hiphop that were less problematic. Beat Street doesn’t “reproduce yet another silence”
(McRobbie "Settling Accounts with Subcultures: A Feminist Critique" 120) in the way
that it represents gender, as McRobbie asserts that Subculture does, but rather
characterizes it in a complex and nuanced manner that is now largely absent from
mainstream and commercial articulations of hip-hop.
8
This is accomplished through the figuring of masculinity and femininity within
the text of the film itself, as well as the film’s intersection with its contemporary hip-hop
and socio-cultural contexts. In the first instance, it’s the importance of the characters in
the film. While there are several female characters, only two figure prominently in the
plot line: Tracy and Carmen, the love interests of the male protagonists. Neither woman,
however, seems to be a part of the hip-hop subculture that’s being represented in the film;
Tracy is a college music student and Carmen is one dimensionally cast as Ramon’s
girlfriend and motivation for settling down. In the second instance, it’s the importance of
the artists appearing in the featured performances (usually as themselves). Thus, despite
the minor roles they play in the story, Us Girls and Baby Love provide another means
through which gender and subculture can be analyzed. Using these four characters as
foci, I’d like to discuss the contradictory representation of gender and, to a lesser degree,
sexuality within Beat Street.
8
A similar argument is made about Wild Style in Chapter 2 and Appendix A. Wild Style
featured graffiti artist Sandra “Pink” Fabara as one of the main characters, as well as a
cameo by Lisa Lee (of Us Girls) who raps in a limo with Busy Bee.
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Tracy
As noted above, Tracy is largely treated as the love interest for Kenny; however,
she is also shown separate from Kenny in two scenes. In the first, she’s seen getting
ready to go to the Roxy, where she’ll meet Lee after he battles his rival crew. In the
second, she’s shown conducting the orchestra at her dance concert. In some senses, the
importance of Tracy lies more in the actress playing her, Rae Dawn Chong. Donald
Bogle notes that there were very few important roles available for black women in the
1980s. In most of her films, Chong played “a woman who seems a mix but basically is
colorless, with no one strongly defined racial/cultural identity” (Bogle 291). Beat Street
is one of the few exceptions to this, making it again fall outside the typical representation
9
of black women within both hip-hop and the films of the 1980s (Bogle 291). This
sentiment is echoed by Abiola Sinclair in her review of the film when she states “it seems
Black girls never get to see themselves cast in a complimentary light on the silver screen”
(Sinclair 22).
On its surface, the presentation of Tracy/Chong is complimentary. The character
is strong and self-confident, both as evidenced by the continued articulation of her with
CCNY and education. Yet Tracy/Chong nevertheless both facilitates and resists
dominant filmic representations of black womanhood. As bell hooks writes,
“contemporary films continue to place black women in two categories, mammy or slut,
and occasionally a combination of the two” (hooks Black Looks: Race and
Representation 74). Tracy/Chong does not fit into either of these categories. She is
9
Chong fares better then fellow biracial actress Jennifer Beals, who “went without any
racial identity whatsoever in her features” (p. 291). He calls specific attention to her role
in Flashdance, which is significant to this discussion as the first feature film to depict
breaking, where Beals played an aspiring ballet dancer. In this film, issues of race are
never discussed, and Bogle points out that while the film could have been powerful in its
casting of a biracial woman as a white character (after all, white women had played
biracial women—tragic mulattoes), it never makes the effort to establish her as white and
instead leaves her completely without racial identity (291).
82
certainly no mammy figure. Her sexuality is a more contested terrain; while she cannot
be considered a slut, there is nevertheless an attempt to sexualize her. The only physical
intimacy we are shown between her and Kenny is their kissing, leaving Tracy/Chong’s
sexuality to be constructed entirely in the third person.
When Kenny returns from his date with her, the implication is that they had sex.
This is conveyed both by his post-sunrise return home and the dialogue that ensues with
his manager and brother. Chollie begins by telling him that he smells good, adding, “I’d
say you got up.” He then says, “Let me hear the details?” Then Lee chimes in, asking
“Was she good?” Kenny, however, resists these implications, and becomes angry with
Chollie and Lee. When Kenny and Chollie start wrestling, Chollie points out to Lee that
when a “man get a little nookie, he cops an attitude.” Again, Chollie and Lee work to
interpolate Kenny into a discourse that would sexualize Tracy/Chong, yet Kenny resists
the move to represent her as a slut. Not only does this complicate Tracy/Chong’s
representation as a sexual woman, but it resists typical representations of (black)
masculinity that depict (black) men as always bragging about their sexual conquests.
Thus while Tracy/Chong can be read as a generally positive character who is strong,
ambitious, and successful—both educationally and financially (her building has a
doorman and she takes a taxi to the Roxy)—she is not given full agency over her own
sexuality.
Dance also figures into the depiction of Tracy. As Angela McRobbie notes,
“Ballet is [. . .] an activity favored within the middle and lower middle classes while
disco dancing is more likely to be linked with working-class [youth]” ("Dance Narratives
and Fantasies" 210). McRobbie goes on to characterize this as an uneasy dichotomy
since dance itself is treated with ambivalence within the middle class who prefers music
("Dance Narratives and Fantasies" 210). This split is manifest as well in the contrast
between Tracy’s composition and Kenny’s DJing. Her compositions are associated with
the academy and concert hall, while his are associated with the house party and club.
83
This split is an already gendered one, however, because of the ideology of class and
education within the black community that, as Vershawn Young has written, marks
“school as a site of effeminacy” (Young 90). By placing this gendered tension between
Tracy and Kenny within an otherwise classed discourse, Beat Street articulates a more
complicated representation of black womanhood, thus returning us to Hall’s claim that
black popular culture is an inherently “contradictory space.”
Carmen
Like Tracy, Carmen’s identity is largely figured through her relationship to one of
the main male protagonists, in Carmen’s case, Ramon. However, while we learn more
about Tracy as the film goes on, we never learn more about Carmen. She is never
developed into an independent character. Instead, she’s one dimensionally cast as
Ramon’s girlfriend and the mother of his child. In other words, Carmen fits the
stereotyped image of the poor ghetto woman of color with at least one child, born out of
wedlock.
10
We aren’t even introduced to Carmen until almost 40 minutes into the film,
when Ramon goes to see her and his baby son, Julian, at Carmen’s family’s apartment.
Their existence is hinted at earlier in the film when Ramon complains to his friends about
his father’s desire for Ramon to make his son “legitimate.” Thus, when we do meet
Carmen and Julian, they’re framed negatively, as Ramon’s illegitimate family. It quickly
becomes clear that both families, represented by Ramon’s father and Carmen’s mother,
do not approve of Ramon and wish he would “take responsibility” for his son and
Carmen. In this sense, Carmen and, by extension, Julian function less as characters in
their own right than as foils for Ramon’s struggle to find himself, both as a graffiti writer
and as a man. As a character herself, Carmen almost entirely upholds the dominant
representation of gender, and also exclusive heterosexuality, within poor neighborhoods
10
A stereotype typified by and perpetuated through the Moynihan Report in the case of
African-Americans in particular.
84
of color. But through her heterosexual relationship with Ramon, Carmen functions to
bring out a possible counter narrative that questions both these dominant ideologies of
gender and heterosexuality within culture, but specifically as it intersects with hip-hop
culture.
Both Carmen’s mother and Ramon’s father use Carmen and Julian as reasons to
question Ramon’s masculinity. In the first scene featuring Carmen, her mother confronts
Ramon, not only asking him “when he’s going to take some responsibility,” but also
calling Ramon’s paternity “a joke.” On the surface, this critique seems only to be
intended as a reinforcement of traditional understandings of masculinity, heterosexual
marriage, and man-as-father-and-provider. When read along with the later scene when
Ramon argues with his father about “what makes a man,” it becomes possible to interpret
this conflict as more than merely a chance to reify the dominant ideology, but as a site
where that ideology is being contested. When Ramon asks his father if Carmen can come
to live with them, Ramon’s father says that they have no room for her since the two of
them are not married. In the conversation that follows this, Ramon begins to articulate a
resistant understanding of manhood in response to his father’s critique:
Ramon: If I married her she could stay with me?
Father: She could stay in the place that you made for her, if you was a man.
Ramon: I am a man.
Father: A man? A man takes care of his own. A man has a job. He’s not a
criminal who goes around scrawling on the subways.
Ramon: How come a man’s what you say? I’m a graffiti writer. I’m an artist. I
don’t just throw up little tags all over the place, I make them trains beautiful.
(Lathan)
Much like Carmen’s mother, Ramon’s father defines a manhood contingent upon
financial and familial responsibility. In that sense, it resembles the archetype that
Michael Kimmel calls the “Self-Made Man,” which came to represent the dominant ideal
of American manhood soon after the Civil War (Kimmel 50). According to Kimmel,
85
“the Self-Made Man [is] a model of manhood that derives identity entirely from a man’s
activities in the public sphere, measured by accumulated wealth and status, by
geographical and social mobility” (Kimmel 13). By stressing Ramon’s financial
responsibility for Carmen and Julian, Ramon’s father reinforces the hegemony of the
Self-Made Man ideology.
In contrast, Ramon’s assertion of his graffiti writing as art cuts manhood from its
traditional ties to the identity of the “breadwinner.” Instead, Ramon offers an alternative
identity for himself that does not center his masculinity on heterosexual family
obligations or financial responsibility, but on his artistic craft. Much like his father’s
conception of manhood, Ramon’s resembles one of Kimmel’s archetypes. In this case,
it’s the “Heroic Artisan,” which was dominant up through the Revolutionary War, but
lost its power with the coming of the Industrial Revolution (Kimmel 6). Kimmel
describes the Heroic Artisan as “independent, virtuous, honest,” and that “on the family
farm or in his urban craft shop, he was an honest toiler, unafraid of hard work, proud of
his craftsmanship and self reliance” (Kimmel 13). Beat Street offers numerous examples
of Ramon’s art, and makes sure that the audience sees how proud he is of it.
Yet while Ramon tries to articulate an artisanal manhood that runs counter to
hegemonic gender constructions, it’s the dominant ideology that seems to win in the end.
Through most of the movie, Ramon struggles between these two conceptions of
masculinity, with Carmen serving as a fulcrum point; she is both supportive of his
graffiti, calling it beautiful, and persistent in expressing her desire to move in with
Ramon. Ultimately, the film seems to reinforce the dominant conception of masculinity.
Ramon finally chooses financial and familial responsibility towards the end of the film;
however, he’s unable to give up his graffiti writing, and it’s his art that eventually gets
him killed. It’s easy to read his death as a statement warning against Ramon’s alternative
definition of manhood, but nevertheless, the fact that, using his relationship with Carmen
86
as a foil, Ramon is able to articulate such an alternative is yet another way in which
gender remains a site of contestation and contradiction in Beat Street.
Us Girls
While the major characters are fertile sites for looking at representations of gender
in hip-hop culture, the cameos by well-known artists provide sites for a different kind of
ideological contestation. Early on in the movie, during a house party scene, Kenny sees
the group Us Girls and puts their record on, prompting them to perform their self-titled
track for the party in what is the first musical showcase of the film. In this performance,
Sha-Rock, Lisa Lee, and Debbie Dee rap about how “Us Girls, can boogie too.” While
the lyrics of the song can no doubt be fruitfully analyzed for the way the song functions
as a form of ideological resistance, I want to focus on the way that Us Girls serves to
disrupt the conventional thought of MCing as a male dominated art merely through the
11
appearance of two already established female MCs, Sha-Rock and Queen Lisa Lee.
Though all three of the artists in Us Girls play important roles in the history of
hip-hop, Sha-Rock had some additional mainstream exposure that the other two did not.
To see why her inclusion in the film is significant, one must go back to 1976, towards the
beginning of hip-hop, “when Sharon Jackson, a/k/a Sha-Rock, appeared at DJ Kool
Herc's parties and got on the microphone” (Phillips, Reddick-Morgan and Stephens 255),
Hip-hop critic Davy D recalls that “back in '78 she was the absolute bomb” (D). Her role
as part of the Funky Four + One, formed in 1979, also makes her an important figure in
early hip-hop history. Not only were they the first mixed gender group
(Oldschoolhiphop.com), but they also became the first hip-hop group to appear on
national television when on February 14, 1981, they performed “That’s the Joint” on
Saturday Night Live (B-Boys.com). It’s significant that Beat Street includes Sha-Rock
11
While I’m sure Debbie Dee was also important and established as a female MC, I
found almost no references to her, and thus cannot write about her historical importance.
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since “unlike many female rappers today, she was not looked at as a sex object, but rather
she was just another member of the [Funky Four + One]” (Oldschoolhiphop.com). Tricia
Rose also notes that Sha-Rock was unique since she was one of the few female artists to
contribute to music production though her role as “one of the innovators of the beat box”
(Rose 57). Such representations of female involvement in hip-hop are outside of the
mainstream, and serve to offer a counter narrative to its male dominant, traditionally
misogynistic history. Yet even as she disrupts this conventional portrayal of hip-hop, her
television and film appearances as well as her involvement with Sugar Hill records, the
label of the Funky 4 + 1, can still be read as aiding in the appropriation of the subculture.
Like Sha-Rock, Lisa Lee was one of the original members of Afrika Bambaataa’s
Zulu Nation. According to Bambaataa, “We had Queen Lisa Lee and Sha-Rock, who
was the first two females that was [sic] blowing it up . . .” (Chang 101). As part of
Bambaataa’s crew, she helped record “Zulu Nation Throwdown” in 1980. Lisa Lee also
made an appearance in the first, and some argue, most “authentic,” of the hip12
hopsploitation films, Wild Style.
Despite what many like Davy D see as the pioneering
role these female MCs played, there is a tendency to overlook if not ignore their
contributions. A good example of this tendency is hip-hop journalist Touré’s interview
of Ahmir Thompson, aka ?uestlove from the Roots crew, who, according to Touré, “has
been the most intellectual member of the Hiphop [sic] Nation for many years” (Touré 5).
At the end of the interview, Touré asks for a list of “the top five MCs of all time”
and receives the usual list of male rappers, including Us Girls contemporary and fellow
Beat Street performer Melle Mel and the slightly later, but nevertheless still
contemporaneous, “Christopher Columbus” of hip-hop, Rakim (Touré 312). Touré
12
Though this appearance is equally contradictory in many ways given that she’s only
shown rapping in the limo with Busy Bee and then as one of the women in the scene
leading up to the off-screen orgy at the hotel. Her full rap as part of the battle with Busy
Bee in the club is included on the DVD as bonus material, but is not included in the film
itself.
88
13
follows this up with a question about female MCs that epitomizes the value placed on
the participation of women in hip-hop: “Is there any female MC that you’d fuck?” (Touré
312). Unfortunately, even ?uestlove, the “intellectual,” goes along with the questioning
rather than commenting on the misogynistic devaluing of female MCs. Touré and
?uestlove discursively construct a definition of the MC that tie quality to men and
fuckability to women; a definition that echo the mainstream articulation of hip-hop to
masculinity. Nevertheless, the use of female MCs to represent early hip-hop history, as
frozen in time by hip-hopsploitation films like Beat Street, and Wild Style, works to not
only highlight the resistance Hall refers to as inherent in black popular culture, but to
also, and somewhat contradictorily, demonstrate that hip-hop wasn’t always articulated
so completely with young black men via rap music culture.
Baby Love
In the same vein as Us Girls, Baby Love, the female member of the Rock Steady
Crew (who play the Bronx Rockers in the film), disrupts the traditional depiction of
breaking in the film. Baby Love appears in two of the film’s scenes: the Roxy battle, and
the subway station battle. Through these two scenes, she represents a complex
representation of female involvement in breaking. While not the first B-girl, Baby Love
was probably the most visible, and, most importantly, was not generally marginalized
within the crew. As part of the second generation of Rock Steady, she helped bring the
group “world wide fame with appearances in concerts, TV shows, and movies” (Theater).
Baby Love, whose given name is Daisy Castro, recounts that in order to be an equal
member of the crew, she had to act like the male members. In other words, she had to
perform a certain B-girl identity. “‘We dressed just like the guys,’ Castro says.
13
The terms MC and Emcee are equivalent, simply representing different preferred
spelling of the same word. I generally try to stick to using the former, but use the latter
on occasion when the context makes it more appropriate.
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‘Windbreakers, Lees with the permanent creases in them, Le Tigre shirts, Adidas, with
the fat laces . . . all of that’” (Verán 55).
The first battle between the two crews at the Roxy is a good example of this.
There, Baby Love is dressed just like the male members of her crew; she wears the same
blue sweatshirt and light blue sweat pants. Though she is the first one to represent her
crew in the battle, which would seem to be a position of honor, she B-girls for only a
short time. Her routine is also one of the least complex, consisting mostly of toprocking
and downrocking without any of the power moves traditionally associated with
14
breaking.
She finishes her set in a crab position and thrusts her hips suggestively at the
opposing crew before leaving the circle. This final move can be read either as a moment
of masculine and misogynistic mimicry, or as an expression of an agented female
sexuality. In the first case, Baby Love is performing a fairly typical move. When done
by most B-boys, the move calls attention to the groin, and generally the hip thrust is
accompanied by the grabbing of the groin. Similarly, B-boys will occasionally simulate
masturbation and even urination or ejaculation. These moves are either meant to
disrespect the opposing team, giving them a performative “fuck you,” or, in more
psychoanalytic terms, to symbolically express their authority over and castration of the
opposing team by simulating their penetration. As prominent queer theorist Leo Bersani
writes, “The only ‘honorable’ sexual behavior ‘consists in being active, in dominating, in
penetrating, and in thereby exercising one’s authority’” (Bersani 212). Of course this
14
Toprocking is the foundational footwork done standing up, often in preparation to go
down onto the ground. Downrocking is a similar foundational footwork, but done with
one or both hands on the ground serving as an axis around which to spin. Power moves
are the much more gymnastic (spinning, head and hand stand) style of moves most often
associated with breaking.
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second reading is less likely the case when performed by Baby Love, since she does not
15
possess the phallus required for penetration.
Additionally, while she thrusts her hips, she does not grab her groin in the way
that other B-boys generally do. If the grabbing of the groin is taken to accentuate the
possession of a phallus, then by not grabbing her groin, Baby Love asserts the absence of
a phallus and by extension disavows a masculine identity. Since our society sees
masculinity as the polar opposite of femininity, Baby Love’s hip-thrust sans groin grab is
then a claiming of feminine sexuality. Her power is questionable, though. On the one
hand, the phallus is traditionally understood as synonymous with power. As Bersani
implies above, the ability to penetrate, which comes with the phallus, is an exercising of
authority and power. Yet on the other hand, Baby Love is not passive but active. She is
thrusting her hips. Thus while passivity is connected to the loss of power, her activity
must be seen as an assertion of an alternate and female phallus-free power (Kaufman 19).
Baby Love’s second appearance is less contradictory within the text of the film
itself, but when articulated with a more general discourse on gender and dance, it
becomes potentially resistant. Unlike the battle at the Roxy, Baby Love is a noncombatant during the battle in the subway. Instead, she can be seen on the sideline
yelling encouragement while the rest of the Bronx Rockers and the entire Beat Street
16
Breakers crew uprock.
Within the text of the film, this places her in the role of
cheerleader rather than B-girl; she’s in the company of the professionally attired women
who appear as momentary bystanders in the background. Her role has been flipped from
15
Interestingly, only one of the other members of her crew does a similar set of
toprocking and downrocking. He can also be seen on the sideline frequently (more so
than any of the other B-boys) making sexualized gestures, such as crotch grabbing or
simulated masturbation, while the other crew is performing. I’m not sure what to make
of the fact that the simplest sets are performed by the female member and the most
misogynistic member of the same crew.
16
Simulated fighting; pantomimed punching, kicking, use of weapons, etc.
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active participant to passive observer, robbing her of both agency and power. Within the
text, this returns her to a more mainstream understanding of the male dominated gender
hierarchy within hip-hop.
17
When juxtaposed with more traditional discourses of gender and dance, her nonparticipation in the scene becomes more resistant. As McRobbie identifies in her essay,
“Dance Narratives and Fantasies,” dance is “a gender-specific leisure choice” that is
more acceptable for women than for men (McRobbie "Dance Narratives and Fantasies"
211, 12-3). The Roxy battle, where Baby Love participates, concludes with celebration,
while the subway battle, where Baby Love does not participate, ends in a police raid.
While Baby Love escapes, the male leaders of both crews are arrested. Symbolically, the
B-boys are disciplined for their dancing, thus reinforcing male participation in dance as
negative, while affirming female participation. Thus it could be interpreted as returning
agency and power to Baby Love when she remains unpunished. Even further, her nonpunishment can be read as a function of her refusal to actually dance herself rather than
as a sanctioning of her passive, normatively feminine, participation in the dance as a
whole. Regardless, Baby Love serves as a locus for the contradictory gendered resistance
to and maintenance of the male dominated hierarchy within hip-hop.
18
Race and Authenticity
While gender and sexuality are good beginning points for looking at the politics
of representation within popular culture, hip-hopsploitation, and Beat Street in particular,
race and racial authenticity form the nucleus of most of the film’s press coverage,
whether in editorials, reviews, or interviews with cast and crew. Beat Street garnered
17
Though of course it’s problematic to set up a binary between male and female that
links activity to the first and passivity to the second.
18
According to Verán, “Baby Love was among the very few who was able to adjust
easily to the real world. ‘I went and got a normal job because the funds ran out, and
eventually graduated from college,’ she says” (59). Like the earlier example of ShaRock, the life of Baby Love outside of the film has other feminist connotations as well.
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much more attention in the black press than any of the other films, perhaps in part
19
because of the creation of this discourse of “authenticity.”
In addition to most
mainstream papers, articles on Beat Street ran in The Chicago Defender, The New York
Amsterdam News, and Jet. All of the articles work hard to distinguish Beat Street from
the “inferior” Breakin’, emphasizing issues of race, politics, authenticity, and local. The
Amsterdam News article, while short, finds the time to point to the romance between
Kenny and Tracy, expressing approval at seeing that “the love interest is between two
Black youth” (Sinclair 22). It goes on to call attention to Lucinda Dickey’s character in
Breakin’ who “although she was very charming and engaging and didn’t have a stuck-up
bone in her body, the girl in ‘Breakin’ [sic] was white” (Sinclair 22).
The racial rhetoric in the article is quite clear, even if the argument itself is
problematic for two reasons. First, in trying to emphasize the difference between the two
pairs, it works to reduce the racial identities of the characters to simple binaries. Rae
Dawn Chong, who plays Tracy, is the daughter of well-known actor and comedian
Tommy Chong, and, as the name may indicate, is biracial. Thus the choice to label her as
black essentializes her racial identity—in an ironic echo of the one-drop rule—such that
“we valorize, by inversion, the very ground of the racism we are trying to deconstruct”
(Hall "What Is This 'Black' in Black Popular Culture?" 472) in the context of the film’s
19
In some ways, a more interesting topic of discussion about this film is the way in
which its content borrows from at least two contemporaneous events in hip-hop. The
first is the B-boy battle that occurs in the subway station and leads to the arrest of Lee
and several other B-boys. In January of 1980, several teenagers were arrested for causing
a disturbance, with what appeared to be fighting, in a Washington Heights subway
station. The police let the teens go once it was determined that they were only dancing
(Rose 50, Chang 155-6)). Similarly, the tension between Ramo and Spit can be seen in
the story captured by the 1983 documentary Style Wars, where a mysterious graffiti
writer named “Cap” begins tagging his name over other people work, defacing it. Of
course all of this makes sense when one takes into account the fact that Beat Street was
originally written by pioneering hip-hop journalist, Steven Hager, who most likely
integrated the reality he covered for the newspapers into the fiction he wrote for the
screen. Of Beat Street, Hager later told Chang that, “Not a single word of anything I
actually wrote made it into that unfortunate film” (Chang 193).
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review.
20
Second, the discussion of Dickey’s character in Breakin’ conflates race with
class by merging her whiteness with not being “stuck-up,” a classed characteristic. I’ll
return to this idea in the section on class, but for the purposes of my discussion of race,
it’s sufficient to note that the discourse of racial authenticity is somewhat contingent on
an understanding of class (or the other way around).
Earl Calloway’s June 13th article on Belafonte stresses race and racial
“authenticity” as well. Not only does Calloway overtly label the film as black, but he
goes on to stress the black origins of hip-hop through several phrases he quotes from
Belafonte, including; “It has its roots in the Black community”; and “Here is a positive
21
film from the heart of the black ghetto” (Calloway "Belafonte Rap on 'Beat Street'" 19).
Calloway also refers to the replacement of the original, white, director of the film with
Lathan, stating that “the team needed an individual who understood the temperment [sic]
of youthful innate talent and could direct the movie in such a way as to retain its natural
flow of life rhythms,” perhaps a not too cryptic reference to the stereotype of whites
lacking rhythm. Calloway further justifies the switch by writing, “it was important for
the director to have an identification [sic] with the subject matter, particularly in terms of
communicating with the kids on a level that was not condescending,” foreclosing any
22
possibility of cross-racial identification (Calloway "Lathan Directs 'Beat Street'" 18).
20
Additionally, Ozone, the “love interest” of Dickey’s character, is not black either, but
rather he’s somewhat ambiguously coded as Hispanic. It’s possible to read the choices of
these pairings within the discourse of miscegenation, but to do so would provide enough
material for an essay in and of itself.
21
The claim that Beat Street is a black film is attributed to Belafonte by Calloway,
however Calloway fails to use quotations, writing “Harry Belafonte . . . exclaimed that
‘Beat Street’ . . . is one of the first truly Black movie [sic] produced since ‘The Wiz.”
22
Jeff Chang’s account of the film leaves out this directorial change, indicating that
Belafonte hired Lathan because he’s African-American and has “extensive experience in
film musicals” (Chang 193). Chang’s account is also contradicted by two Variety
notices. The first, on May 23, 1984, is a Cannes Festival review of the film that includes
a note on Andy Davis’ shift from “original director” to “co-writer.” The second, a
September 3, 1986 notice entitled ‘Director Shifts During Filming,” which includes a
12/83 entry for Beat Street, and a change from Andrew Davis to Stan Lathan (82).
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Again the trope of the condescending or stuck-up white person appears, this time in
reference to the production of the film itself.
Race and authenticity are inextricably tied together in many of the articles on the
movie. Calloway sets up Beat Street as authentic in contrast to previous, white, movies
on hip-hop that were only interested in turning a profit (Calloway "Belafonte Rap on
'Beat Street'" 19).
23
In Calloway’s subsequent article, which this time focuses on Lathan,
his discussion of authenticity is much more overt, with the term itself, or a derivative,
appearing three times in addition to equivalencies like the film being an “actual account”
shot on “actualy [sic] location” (Calloway "Lathan Directs 'Beat Street'" 18). Abiola
Sinclair also references authenticity in the title of her Amsterdam News article and calls
the film “the real deal” (Sinclair 22). In an interview done by Jet, Belafonte explicitly
links race with authenticity when he says, “I’m sure there are White graffiti artists and
White electric boogie dancers. But in order to give this film its authenticity, we needed
to keep it in the Bronx and deal with the hopes and frustration of the Blacks and
Hispanics” ("Belafonte's 'Beat Street' Makes It Big" 62). That Belafonte would make
such a statement about white graffiti artists given that the antagonist of the film is a white
graffiti artist is curious. It can be seen as setting Spit up as not only the literal antagonist
of the film, but also as the inauthentic counterpoint to the authenticity of the film.
Within this racialized casting of the film would seem to reside one of the binaries
Hall warned about. Rather than playing off the trope of the condescending white in this
case, it would seem to play on the trope of white as devil. It is Spit, after all, that
23
“’Beat Street’ is a very positive film of youth establishing a tradition with the white
society becoming interested in the hip-hop culture because of its monetary potential.”
While Breakin’ is the most obvious subject of this critique, it’s also possible that he’s
referring to Wild Style. It’s interesting through to note that Beat Street was tied into a
record deal with Atlantic for the movie’s music. According to the April 7, 1984 issue of
Billboard, the company was hoping that Beat Street would cross over and not be “strictly
black” "Atlantic's Hip-Hop Soundtrack: Crossover Eyed for 'Beat Street'," Billboard
April 7 1984..
95
eventually causes the death of Ramon when in their struggle, the two fighting artists land
on the third rail of the subway line. While it would be unexpected to see a memorial for
Spit, as there is for Ramon, his death completely goes by without mention. Spit is thus
only depicted as a villain and never given a voice—save perhaps for the few tags we see
of his throughout the film: his name, Spit. The viewer’s only understanding of what
motivates Spit to deface the burners of other artists comes from Ramon’s assertion that
Spit does it because his own burners “came out looking like they were already messed
up.” In other words, Spit has no talent. He is rendered inauthentic; an embodiment of the
24
appropriation of “black” culture by whites.
This specific example aside, the discourse of authenticity surrounding the film is
significant. While Hall warns of setting up binaries between the authentic and
inauthentic as a problematic form of essentialism, Paul Gilroy sets up a different function
of racial authenticity within black popular music:
Authenticity enhances the appeal of selected cultural commodities and has
become an important element in the mechanism of the mode of racialisation [sic]
necessary to making non-European and non-American musics acceptable items in
an expanded pop market. The discourse of authenticity has been a notable
presence in the mass marketing of successive black folk-cultural forms to white
audiences. (Gilroy 99)
Gilroy’s version of racial authenticity more closely resembles strategic essentialism in the
way he deploys it as a tool for making black popular music viable for non-black markets.
While there is certainly some truth to this claim when it comes to more general
discussions of racial authenticity within hip-hop, and particularly the marketing of hiphop to white audiences, it’s unclear whether this is the case with the discourse of racial
24
Spit is based on a graffiti artist, Cap, from the documentary Style Wars. Cap’s
motivation for tagging over the work of others is discussed much more in depth in Style
Wars. Chalfant and Silver are able to interview Cap, and the viewer learns that some of
Cap’s motivation is revenge for slights he perceives from other writers who either go
over his work, or the work of his friends. In many ways, however, his motivation is the
same as the other writers in that he’s seeking fame by going all city—having his work
appear on all the train lines, thus all over the city.
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authenticity surrounding Beat Street. On the one hand, as indicated by Grant and
Watkins as well as Belafonte himself, the films were targeted at hip-hop fans and black
25
urban youth, the former being seen as necessarily the latter.
It was not targeted at
whites, as it would need to be to fit into this understanding of authenticity. However, as
with most commodified cultural artifacts, there is pressure to ensure that the product
reaches the largest possible audience, which, in the case of the US, is white people.
A more thoughtful reading of these invocations of authenticity would locate them
within the larger discourse of subcultures. Sarah Thornton’s work on club culture, and
particularly her theorizing of authenticity and sub-cultural capital are particularly useful
for this. Both Calloway and Belafonte mention the locality of the film in attempting to
establish its authenticity. As Thornton writes, “‘black’ dance musics are more likely to
be rooted in local urban scenes and neighbour-‘hoods’. Even gestures to the black
diaspora point to local subculture and city places—[the Bronx] New York, Chicago,
Detroit, Washington. These specific places anchor and authenticate music, render it
tangible and real” (Thornton 74). In this context, the rhetoric of locale on the part of
Calloway and Belafonte works to solidify the authenticity of the film and appeal to an
audience within the subculture, not outside of it. Alternately, it might be said that the
reviews work to establish authenticity by gaining what Thornton calls “subcultural
capital.” She writes, “Subcultural capital confers status on its owner in the eyes of the
relevant beholder,” And “can be objectified or embodied” (Thornton 11). By cataloging
the realness of the film, Belafonte (via the Jet interview and Calloway’s article) increases
25
While I take this assertion at face value here, I will question this in Chapter 6. More
generally, this dissertation argues that hip-hop underwent a process of rearticulation that
reshaped its representation, partly as a means of making it more suitable for mainstream
(i.e. white) consumption. The hip-hopsploitation films, as discussed in the previous
chapter, are part of that transition. Accordingly, I believe they represent one of the first
times that hip-hop was commodified and sold to mainstream American, something I take
up further in Chapter 6.
97
his status and thus the perception of authenticity with the “relevant beholder,” in this
case, black and Hispanic hip-hop fans (from the Bronx).
The discourse of authenticity is also a mainstay of hip-hop culture specifically,
which Kembrew McLeod has linked back to its uncertain status as a subculture. He
writes, “The multiple invocations of authenticity made by hip-hop community members
are a direct and conscious reaction to the threat of the assimilation and the colonization of
this self-identified, resistive subculture” (McLeod 146). Explained differently by hip-hop
critic and author Brian Goedde, the impulse to highlight ones authenticity, or, put in hiphop terms, to “represent represent,” is a matter of reminding the world of one’s existence.
He borrows a term from Schopenhauer to discuss the way that hip-hop is an expression of
a “will to life.” Goedde writes, “hip-hop’s represent! represent! means its will to life. To
shout out people and places is to recognize their existence and your enduring allegiance
to them; to re-present them in song is to commit a record of their names to posterity; to
shout them out is to will them to life in a world of hostility” (Goedde 11). When thought
about in these terms, it makes sense that hip-hop would be concerned with representing,
or being authentic given its origins in the urban desolation of Carter, Reagan, and Bushera New York.
Representation then is linked to a kind of survival, and as McLeod writes, “When
faced with the very real threat of erasure via misrepresentation by outsiders like [. . . ]
major label executives, and out of touch advertising agencies, hip-hop community
members attempt to protect their culture by distinguishing authentic and inauthentic
expression” (McLeod 148). Both Goedde and McLeod identify a number of different
registers on which authenticity is measured, geography being one of them. Thus despite
the fact that it is the geography of the ghetto that is most immediately hostile, it is also a
major source of authenticity. Perhaps the most central register of authenticity, at least for
Goedde, is race, and racial authenticity functions as a kind of gatekeeper for those
wishing to “represent” hip-hop, whether as artist, fans, critics, or filmmakers. Of course,
98
it should not then be surprising that racial authenticity and the politics of racial
representation feature so prominently in the discourse circulated around Beat Street by
the press.
Yet, despite all the rhetoric of race found in the press about the film, race is barely
treated specifically within the film itself. The only time attention is overtly called to race,
it’s by one of three white characters in the film. During the early house party scene the
protagonists hear someone drumming on the pipes in the basement, and upon
26
investigation, find Paul , a white drummer looking for an old army buddy of his. Paul
quickly becomes one of the gang—the token white boy. When Ramon has finally
decided to settle down with Carmen, get a job, and fix up one of the apartments in the
burnt out tenement building they have house parties in, Paul, along with Luis, is primarily
responsible for making the place habitable. At the “house” warming party afterwards,
Ramon thanks Luis and Paul for their help. Paul’s reply is “hey, us Puerto Ricans need to
stick together, right?” This draws friendly chuckles from Luis and Ramon, both Puerto
Ricans, but is then dropped. While this moment has the potential of carrying a strong
message about race, or even merely serving to call attention to the subject of race that
was overwhelmingly present in all aspect of hip-hop culture—save, apparently, Beat
Street—at the time, the movie fails to follow through and make the comment anything
more than a passing joke.
27
This failure is especially surprising with Beat Street given
26
There is some disagreement between Jet and MGM (on MGM.com) as to what this
character is actually named and who played him. MGM attributes this character to
Richard Thomsen, who’s credited with playing the character Paul. In a picture of part of
the cast, Jet states that the actor’s name is Dean Elliot, who is credited with playing
Henri. Unfortunately, the character is never referred to by name in the film, thus there is
no way of verifying which name is in fact correct, short of watching any movies in which
these actors have also appeared. I’m choosing to call the character Paul not because I’m
privileging MGM over Jet, but because it sounds whiter than Henri (hope Gilroy doesn’t
mind).
27
In Gilroy’s Against Race, he discusses the narratives of concentration camp survivors
who were freed by African-American soldiers. He writes, “These encounters are
powerful reminders of the arbitrariness of racial divisions, the absurdity and pettiness of
racial typologies, and the mortal danger that have always attended their
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the explicitly racial content of Belafonte’s discussion of the film. But it’s important to
reiterate that this failing isn’t total, that the film is not without its redeeming moments, as
these representations are contested and often ambivalent in their depictions of race.
Class and the Black Community
Though race figures prominently into the reception of Beat Street, class is perhaps
one of the most prominent aspects within the film itself. In fact it is the only social issue
related to cultural hegemony that is referenced overtly. The tension between lower and
middle class forms of art that is evident in the earlier hip-hopsploitation films, is here
“displaced from the world at large to the black community” (Hoberman "Their Big
Break" 53), such that it is between the ghetto/poor black and academic/bourgeoisie black.
J. Hoberman hits the nail on the head when, in his review of the film, he writes:
The difference between Jazz dancing and breaking . . . is here a matter of
academic black culture revitalizing itself, as when Chong [Tracy] brings Taylor
[Lee] up to perform for her colleagues at CCNY, while issues of class rather than
race are played out in the messy, strikingly low-keyed romance between Davis
[Kenny] and Chong. (Hoberman "Their Big Break" 53)
While Hoberman sees this relationship as low-keyed, there is in fact a lot of class-based
tension.
28
This tension is set up during the parallel action sequence of Tracy and Kenny,
along with their friends, getting ready to go to the Roxy. Clips of Tracy putting on nice
clothing in her apartment and then getting into a cab with some friends (both of whom are
29
white) are intercut with clips of Kenny and his crew taking the train to the Roxy.
The
institutionalization” (305). A proper theorizing would go on to talk about the potential of
this scene for remarking on the recognition of the Other in one’s self.
28
It would be interesting to explore the significance of African art in this “revitalization.”
The “Jazz dancing” that Hoberman refers to seems heavily African-influenced. Is this
appropriation of African culture a marker of the black bourgeoisie or lower class blacks?
29
Wolfgang Schivelbusch’s analysis of the European and American rail systems does
contest this conclusion some, however. He writes, “The [American style] classless open
car was economically, politically, psychologically and culturally the appropriate travel
container for a democratic pioneering society, while the compartment car, on the other
hand, expressed the social conditions prevailing in Europe,” Wolfgang Schivelbusch, The
Railway Journey (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986) 103.
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contrast between their living environments and means of transportation is stark. It serves
to frame the class difference so that when Kenny sees Tracy at the entrance to the Roxy,
his surveyal of her not only serves as a visual cue that he’s interested in her, but also that
he too has noticed their class difference.
This tension seems to reach a flash point when Lee breaks for Tracy’s CCNY
class. When Kenny sees that Lee isn’t going to be in their performance, he gets angry
and accuses them of checking out Lee “like he’s some kind of freak.” When the older
black female teacher tells Lee he can’t even look at the tape of his dancing, Kenny again
jumps in with an angry retort, aimed at both teachers and Tracy: “Lady, y’all be showing
how you down with breakin’ and that’s bull-shit because you ain’t down with nothing.
And you [Tracy], man you was lookin’ so proud. ‘I found a little nigger myself do I get
30
an A teacher?’ You just like all the biters, you take a bite and leave the rest.”
Here
Kenny uses racist language in reference to previous forms of racialized performance,
such as minstrelsy (Lott Love and Theft : Blackface Minstrelsy and the American
Working Class), to solidify the class difference and critique the bourgeois attitudes of
Tracy and the other people in her class. By using “nigger” in reference to the academic’s
treatment of Lee, Kenny equates them with middle class status. This tension within the
black community between the middle class and working/lower class is a common trope
within the discourse of race and class. Valerie Smith traces it back to the turn of the
century and Franz Boaz, one of the pioneers of socio-anthropological studies of black
culture, whose study of black folklore could be interpreted “as associating unadulterated
racial identity with the black poor and uneducated and racial assimilation with the
educated” (Smith 64). Class, then, becomes tied in with the rhetoric of racial
authenticity. To be middle class means one is not authentically black. In E. Franklin
30
It’s arguable that this moment is actually about race, but since the racist language is
being mobilized to discuss class, I want to focus on the later rather than the former.
101
Frazier’s Black Bourgeoisie, he similarly characterizes the black middle class as cut off
from their cultural roots (in the black community) and yet not accepted by the white
middle class community (Frazier 176).
Of course by being inauthentically black, the black middle class becomes coded
as white. When Kenny utters the word “nigger,” he interpolates Tracy and her colleagues
into this discourse of racial authenticity. By using racist language, Kenny frames Tracy’s
inauthentic blackness, i.e. whiteness, as derogatory. A similarly negative association is
implicit in Valerie Smith’s quote about Boaz, as well as in Frazier’s sociological study on
the black middle class. Characterizing whiteness as undesirable and negative would, at
face value, seem to be a moment of political resistance to the dominant ideology. While
Smith seeks to “problematize the almost inevitable associations of the black middle class
with assimilationism and racial betrayal” (Smith 85), doing so doesn’t fully address the
harmful implications of this association. Since the dominant ideology is one of
hegemonic whiteness, a denigration of the black middle class reinforces a racist class
divide. In other words the sentiment works to maintain the dominance of whiteness by
effectively discouraging the economic advancement of African-Americans, since
economic success means being seen as not authentically black, a sell-out, and white.
This parallels the autocritographic performance writing of Vershawn Young, when he
recounts the experience of mentally calling a black student, Cam, a nigger as a means of
separating Cam’s ghetto, lower-class status, from Young’s own educated, and culturally
if not economically middle-class status. Young writes, “I was worried that Cam would
see me as a faggot and an Uncle Tom because in the ghetto where I grew up, school was
construed as the ultimate site for middle class whiteness. . . .” (Young 90). Young too
identifies the conflation of education and middle-class status with whiteness, and by
31
extension, inauthenticity.
31
Though relevant to my discussion in several places, this chapter of Young’s book—
itself largely about literacy and the performance of race—does more to connect the
102
This theme resurfaces when Kenny goes to do some work in the CCNY studio
32
with the help of Tracy and Robert, her music professor and friend.
Kenny seems
uneasy and threatened by Robert, who appears to be very close to Tracy. So much so that
when the computer crashes Kenny is agitated and decides to leave. When Tracy asks him
why he wants to leave, Kenny tries to diminish Robert in her eyes and an argument
ensues. Tracy says, “You don’t even know why I’m with you,” and Kenny bitingly
replies, “I got it figured out. You the missionary and I’m the native.” The
missionary/native dichotomy again serves to inscribe a racialized class division on their
relationship. Rather than using racist language, Kenny chooses language that references
colonialism, thus marrying further middle class blacks with hegemony/domination and
being (or desiring to be) white. This is reflected in the words of Frantz Fanon, when he
writes:
Every colonized people—in other words, every people in whose soul an
inferiority complex has been created by the death and burial of its local cultural
originality—finds itself face to face with the language of the civilizing nation; that
is, with the culture of the mother country. The colonized is elevated above his
jungle status in proportion to his adoption of the mother country’s cultural
standards. He becomes whiter as he renounces his blackness, his jungle. (18)
Fanon creates two oppositional positions; the black colonized, authentic (culturally
original) body versus the white (or whitened) colonizing educated, inauthentic body. As
Tracy has given up her jungle, her cultural originality, and adopted the language of the
colonized, become educated, she has become white.
To return to Hoberman’s quote, Kenny and Tracy are playing out the class tension
of hip-hop as it comes into contact with other, more traditional and middle class forms of
conception of education and whiteness as effeminate and homosexual than it deals with
authenticity explicitly. Still, there are several fruitful parallels, especially for the earlier
discussion of gender and sexuality.
32
It might be possible to read Robert as a stand-in for Belafonte himself. Whether or not
this might be a stretch, considering Belafonte’s own position as a rather well known
middle-class (or even upper-class) African-American could add another dimension of
analysis, but doing so is beyond the scope of this paper.
103
artistic expression. This first manifests itself in relation to dance, when on the way to
perform for Tracy’s class, Chollie, Kenny’s friend and manager, tells Lee that CCNY is
“the big time.” In other words, the kind of dancing that happens within the academic and
middle class setting of CCNY is legitimate, and by extension B-boying is not. We see
this supported in the arrest of the B-boy crews for breaking in a subway station,
something that would not have happened to Tracy’s bourgeoisie dance troupe. As
Angela McRobbie notes, “Ballet is therefore an activity favored within the middle and
lower middle classes while disco dancing is more likely to be linked with working-class
33
[youth]” (McRobbie "Dance Narratives and Fantasies" 210).
McRobbie goes on to
discuss the way this is an uneasy dichotomy, since dance itself is treated with
ambivalence within the middle class, who prefers music (McRobbie "Dance Narratives
and Fantasies" 210). This split is also manifested in the contrast between Tracy’s
composition and Kenny’s DJing. Her compositions are associated with the academy and
concert hall, while his are associated with the house party, club, or disco.
Tracy both attempts to dissolve this split and reify it when she calls attention to
the similarities (and thus differences) between her music and Kenny’s. When Kenny—
having dubbed her composition from the videotape they took of Lee’s performance—
plays her music, Tracy responds by telling him, “You know it’s not so different from
what you’re doing here.” This early attempt at breaking down the barriers between these
different types of artistic expression foreshadows the final scene of celebration in the
film, when, after Ramon’s death, Kenny brings together both hip-hop dance and musical
acts with more middle class ones. It is this final scene of synthesis that both most fully
33
I want to note that the quote actually refers to working class girls, not youth.
McRobbie’s essay deals heavily with the way that dance is gendered within British
working class and middle class culture. I don’t mean to gloss over the significance of
gender, I just don’t have the time to go into it in detail here. It’s also interesting to note
the influence of African dance and music within the context of both the dancing and
composition in the CCNY concert. I would like to tentatively suggest that there is a link
between this tendency and the black bourgeoisie, but I have no research to back this up.
104
embodies the socio-political critique of the film as well as its ultimate failure in making
that critique. Nevertheless, it’s important to recognize the attempt Beat Street is making
to re-present hip-hop in an “authentic” and non-exploitative way, to resist the urge to
flatten it and erase its contradictions.
Successes and Failures
Before getting into the way Beat Street fails, I’d like to highlight some of the
moments of political resistance. As Hoberman writes in his review, “however enjoyable,
Beat Street is basically didactic” ("Their Big Break" 53). He goes on to say that while
the previous hip-hopsploitation films also present hip-hop as positive, “Beat Street is
careful to tell you why. Hip-hop is a utopian community, an explicit black-Latin
synthesis that, as the film progresses, reveals the capacity to encompass all races, sexes,
and classes . . .” (Hoberman "Their Big Break" 53). While this is indeed the arc of the
film’s message, there is also a critique embedded in the text. In the Jet article, Belafonte
is quite clear in his discussion of the film’s political content:
The real story about break dancing isn’t the wonderful feat of these kids being
able to spin . . .. That in itself is marvelous, but the more important story that
we’ve tried to tell in this film is that Presidents Carter and Reagan have gone into
this community—the South Bronx—have raped it with television cameras and
with promises to this most underprivileged group, and then, when they got into
office, nothing was done at all to change the plight of these wretched people.
("Belafonte's 'Beat Street' Makes It Big" 60-61)
Belafonte highlights the ways in which the youth of the South Bronx have managed to
create a dynamic cultural movement on their own ("Belafonte's 'Beat Street' Makes It
Big" 62). Evidence of this can be seen throughout the film in the cinematic treatment of
the South Bronx. The Variety film review notes “the realism of the bombed-out
backdrops” ("Beat Street" 26), and Hoberman refers to it as “Somber” ("Their Big Break"
53). Both the opening sequence of the film as well as the sequence leading up to the final
New Year’s Celebration at the Roxy intercut the characters with the urban decay of the
South Bronx. These short montages are obviously meant to call attention to the
environment from which hip-hop is springing.
105
The social concerns of Belafonte, and perhaps Lathan, are most obviously evident
in the finale of the film, where the community comes together to mourn the death of
Ramon and make an informal pledge to promote peace and rebuild the crumbling Bronx.
Not only do we see the “utopian community” Hoberman refers to, but the synthesis of
hip-hop with classical forms of dance and music is finally realized. As described earlier,
the celebration begins with music: a hip-hop beat with some scratching, playing under a
short scenic montage of the South Bronx’s urban decay, and intercut with examples of
public art, including graffiti. The intercuting incorporates Kenny as he begins to rap, and
as he sings a memorial to Ramon as well as a request for peace, we see shots of the two
B-boy crews reconciling with each other. We also see Ramon’s father finally looking at
the graffiti his son painted, and Ramon’s girlfriend sadly packing up their son and leaving
their makeshift apartment.
As Kenny finishes off his verse, Grandmaster Melle Mel and the Furious Five
come on stage and engage the crowd in some call and response. Melle Mel’s verse is less
about Ramon, but much more biting in its social critique. He not only criticizes the Cold
War weapons programs, but talks about the Star Wars program and the way “The
34
President just forgot about earth.”
He also references poverty in New York and Africa
when he says:
There's gold in the street and there's diamond under feet
And the children in Africa don't even eat
Flies on their faces, they're livin like mice
And their houses even make the ghetto look nice
Huh, the water tastes funny, it's forever too sunny
And they work all month and don't make no money
34
For a full transcript of the film version of “Beat Street Breakdown,” please see
Appendix B.
106
Verses like these are typical of Melle Mel, who is also known for his role as principle
lyricist on Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five’s “The Message,” which makes a
similar social commentary (and is known for the classic chorus “Don’t push me ‘cause
35
I’m close to the edge. I’m try-ing not to loose my head”).
Once again, the choice of
artist is significant. By featuring Grandmaster Melle Mel, who according to some “took
hip-hop away from braggadocio into social commentary” (icebergradio.com), the
producers of Beat Street seemed to be opening up a space for resistance to the dominant
social structure.
36
Rather than have one of the other popular groups, for example the
more commercial Sugar Hill Gang, that was known for boasting and bragging, the choice
was to play up the message Belafonte voices in the Jet article.
As Melle Mel wraps up his socially conscious verse, Bernard Fowler comes out
37
with the “Bronx Gospel Choir” and performs a song about social activism, the
35
However Chang notes that “The Message” was actually primarily a studio creation, a
“concoction of Sugar Hill songwriter and house band percussionist Ed ‘Duke Bootee’
Fletcher” (178). Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five didn’t like the track and refused
to record it, so Duke Bootee and Sugar Hill owner Sylvia Robinson took previously
recorded verses of Melle Mel and placed them over the track. By the time Flash realized
that the song was being made without him, it was too late. Chang writes, “[t]he video
appeared, with Flash and the crew lip-synching along to a rap only Mel had helped
compose” (178). What’s more, the fallout left Melle Mel estranged from the group,
fighting with Grandmaster Flash and Sugar Hill over the rights to the Furious Five name.
36
It’s significant to note, however, that the version of the song in the movie is
significantly different from the song as it was released on the soundtrack (See Appendix
B for lyrics to both). This is not in itself important, since it’s understandable that such a
long song might need to be cut down for the screen. However it isn’t simply a matter of
abridgement. One of Melle Mel’s verses on the soundtrack lists Reagan along with
people like Hitler, Ceasar, Napolean, and Mussolini, to name a few. That verse is
changed to a listing of locations of significance in the film version, among them Vietnam,
Auschwitz, and Hiroshima: a less powerful critique.
37
Bernard Fowler is credited alone as part of this final scene, however a later unspecified
soundtrack/musical credit includes the Mariner’s Baptist Church Choir, which
presumably would be the choir in the scene. Carl MaultsBy also appears in these credits,
and several online articles point to his long time association with Belafonte, who “even
drafted MaultsBy to perform in a gospel choir in the finale of his 1984 hip-hop movie,
"Beat Street" Mark Pinsky, "Musician Keeps Time by the Rhythmic Beat of His Roots,"
The Orlando Sentinal Online (2004), vol.. Neither this final gospel song nor any of these
artists appeared on the Atlantic Records released soundtracks.
107
repeating chorus of which intones the audience to “believe it.” The song alternates
descriptions of oppression with the optimistic communal response, for example:
They buried us
So we became a flower, believe it (believe it)
Believe it (believe it)
They gave us nothing
So we took power, believe it (believe it)
Later verses specifically reference the power of hip-hop: “They tried to break us/But now
we’re the breakers, believe it (believe it)”; and “When we’re hip-hop/(now we’re going
up)/We’re going to take it to the top.” This song epitomizes not only the political critique
the film is attempting to level, but also the subcultural resistance to ideological
dominance that Kellner refers to in his earlier quote (Kellner 60).
Yet despite the good intentions of the film’s producers, the resistant
representations of oppressed groups, and the overt social commentary of the final scene,
it ultimately fails in its attempts. J. Hoberman is quick to point out that in some ways, the
optimism of the film works to gloss over the real problems of the Bronx, and suggest that
not only can the hard work and talent of these struggling artists bring them success, but
that they can even heal the community through the power of hip-hop (Hoberman "Their
Big Break" 53). Verán refers to Beat Street as “a Hollywood-skewed interpretation” of
breaking and hip-hop (Verán 57). The failure of the film in its presentation of hip-hop
and its relation to society, specifically the South Bronx, is two fold: it obscures the root
cause of and responsibility for the neighborhood’s poverty, and it subsequently offers up
hip-hop as an idealized solution to these poor conditions. To begin with the first of these,
it presents the problem as resting at the feet of the inhabitants of the ghetto rather than the
108
38
Presidents, Carter and Reagan , who have “raped” the community. This is evident in the
way the film itself never mentions the cause of the poor conditions of the ghetto. Though
there are several urban landscape sequences, they all work to frame it as the habitat of Bboys and B-girls, graffiti writers, and DJs rather than the responsibility of the larger
society.
To return to the lyrics of Fowler, the emphasis of the film is put on the necessity
of these people becoming a flower rather than the fact that someone is burying them in
the first place. It can also be seen in the way that Kenny and his mother talk about the
eldest brother, who was killed by the police because of his gang affiliation. Kenny
doesn’t express anger at what could be seen as the murder of his brother, but rather a
determination not to end up like his brother. In other words it is his responsibility not to
be a victim rather than putting the responsibility on the shoulders of the state and its
representatives not to be the killers.
Similarly, Kenny and Lee’s mother talks about how she won’t lose another son,
again the emphasis being on her responsibility in the matter. There is no accountability
for the social and economic conditions that have affected the community. As Hall writes
in his discussion of Gramsci’s relevance to the study of race, “a class will always have its
spontaneous, vivid but not coherent or philosophically elaborated, instinctive
understanding of its basic conditions of life and the nature of the constraints and forms of
exploitation to which it is commonly subjected” (Hall "Gramsci's Relevance for the
Study of Race and Ethnicity" 432). This self-knowledge of their exploitation is “dumbed
down for the kids” (Chang 193) and “reduced to a kid-friendly Broadway production,
scrubbed clean for prime-time, force-fitted into one-size-fits-all” (Chang 194) according
to Chang’s critique of the film. Much like the discourse of poverty and welfare in
38
I find it interesting and ironic to note that while Reagan is “raping” this community, to
use the words of Belafonte, he is also requesting that they perform for his inauguration.
Talk about exploitation!
109
America, this message of individual/community responsibility over
governmental/societal accountability serves to reify the notion that it is up to the poor to
stop being poor, thereby allowing the privileged to feel secure in their wealth. Thus
while the film calls attention to the horrendous neglect and urban decay of the South
Bronx, it ultimately serves as a cathartic release as it displaces the guilt of the dominant
class onto the backs of the oppressed.
The second failure of the film is that it portrays hip-hop as the means through
which young ghetto blacks and Hispanics can raise themselves out of that poverty. This
notion serves to reinforce the colloquialism that the only ways out of the ghetto are on a
basketball scholarship, a record label, or in a body bag. Hoberman again hits the nail on
the head when he remarks that Beat Street and its ilk, “testify that the romantic
imagination can prevail over a grim, quotidian social order, that—in America at least—
one can still sing and dance (or paint) one’s way to the top.” This hip-hop Horatio Alger
story then reifies the myth of the American meritocracy, and glosses over the way the
dominant social order and capitalist system have failed and even oppressed this
population. This shouldn’t be surprising, however, since, as Berger suggests, it is
partially the mystification of these conditions in artistic representations of history that is
responsible for rearticulating this ideology. While Berger is talking primarily of
paintings, the sentiment holds true of media in general, for one purpose of media is to
freeze information, and thus representation, in time and space. Though these tensions
and failures aren’t limited to Beat Street, or even hip-hopsploitation, the film offers an
important look at this ambivalence at a crucial time in hip-hop history.
Conclusion
Yet regardless of whether or not the optimism of Beat Street comes across as
naïveté, politics, or reification, the fact remains that it is exceptional in its ambition of
creating an “authentic” representation of hip-hop as well as “the hopes and aspiration of
the people of the community” ("Belafonte's 'Beat Street' Makes It Big" 62). Beat Street
110
also has the distinction of being the most discussed film within film scholarship, hip-hop,
and in the black press at the time of its release, as well as the most professionally
produced. Although it makes a noble effort not to exploit hip-hop, Beat Street still ends
up being a hip-hopsploitation film. To return in this at this point to Hebdige, the film
works through both the commodity and ideological form of incorporation to
reappropriate hip-hop into the mainstream. In the first instance, Beat Street helps freeze
the meaning of hip-hop so that it “become[s] codified, made comprehensible, rendered at
once public property and profitable merchandise” (Hebdige 96). This works in two ways:
by defining hip-hop as its filmic representation and by selling that representation to the
general populace. Ideologically, the film reifies traditional representations of race and
class, as well as to ultimately de-fang the resistant nature of hip-hop as a cultural
movement in the face of social and economic oppression.
But again, it won’t do to conclude this chapter by falling back on the notion that
one side or another has won or lost the struggle as it relates to this popular culture
artifact. The successes and failures of Beat Street should be recognized as part of the
contradictory nature of black popular culture that Hall identified. In that sense, we can
also see this film as a part of the struggle for cultural hegemony. As Hall writes in
relation to Gramsci’s notion of hegemony, “It thus requires an extensive cultural and
ideological struggle to bring about or effect the intellectual and ethical unity which is
essential to the forging of hegemony: a struggle which takes the form of ‘a struggle of
political hegemonies and of opposing directions . . .’” (Hall "Gramsci's Relevance for the
Study of Race and Ethnicity" 425). In other words, the purpose of mainstream
incorporation of hip-hop is to silence those revolutionary aspects of the subculture that
threaten the stability of the already ruling hegemon. If this is the case, then the
problematic albeit established representations of race and class are also part of that
struggle. Hall identifies one of the major contributions of Gramsci as being his
reformulation of hegemony. In doing this, he widened the scope of the struggle for
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hegemony to include not merely class, but other social positions as well, race being one
of them.
Hall does an excellent job of describing this complex network of tensions and
struggles, contradictions, successes and failures present in the fight for hegemony. Hall
writes:
In fact, [Gramsci’s hegemony] is already a theoretically complex and rich
formulation. It implies that the actual social or political force which becomes
decisive in a moment of organic crisis will not be composed of a single
homogeneous class but will have a complex social composition. Second, it is
implicit that its basis of unity will have to be, not an automatic one, given by its
position in the mode of economic production, but rather a ‘system of alliances’.
Third, though such a political and social force has its roots in the fundamental
class division of society, the actual forms of the political struggle will have a
wider social character—dividing society not simply along ‘class versus class’
lines, but rather polarizing it along the broadest front of antagonism . . .. The
difficulty is that it often continues to be described, theoretically, in terms which
reduce the complexity of its actual social composition to the more simple,
descriptive terms of a struggle between two, apparently, simple and homogeneous
class blocs. (Hall "Gramsci's Relevance for the Study of Race and Ethnicity" 425)
In this chapter I have tried not to reduce the complexity of hip-hop as it’s represented by
Beat Street, but to highlight it; to look at the many competing and sometimes
contradictory ideological positions being mobilized in and around the film. In terms of
race, Beat Street is illustrative of the tension common in much of hip-hop culture
between a discourse of authenticity and what could be interpreted as racialized strategic
essentialism. Its representations of race and gender within hip-hop, while in many ways
consistent with the dominant articulation of hip-hop, also further demonstrate that this is
not the only articulation. What’s more, though the film tries earnestly to produce a
positive representation of this emerging subculture, its well-intentioned depictions reify a
dominant ideological understanding of race, and help to prime hip-hop for its eventual
exploitation. Similarly, though disparities of class seem to be a driving force in much of
the narrative, the film itself works to paper over the very real class problems of urban
neglect that provide Beat Street with its setting.
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Yet it is this very complexity and contradiction that makes the representation of
hip-hop in Beat Street important for my dissertation. What this close reading of Beat
Street shows is that, like the other hip-hopsploitation films, Beat Street not only
articulated hip-hop to breaking, graffiti, and DJing, but also to a more complex set of
gender, race, and class relations and representations. Whereas the articulation of hip-hop
to MCing as rap music culture has tended to yield a string of related signifiers linking it
to misogyny, homophobia, violence, hyper-capitalism, and hyper-masculine blackness,
Beat Street contains a more complex articulation of hip-hop as a set of cultural practices
that characterizes it as relatively more inclusive. This is not to say that Beat Street is
entirely progressive in the way it handles these axes of identity and differentiation, but
simply that it is a much more complex and contradictory articulation of hip-hop that
includes reductive, progressive, conservative, and resistant aspects. In short, Beat Street
is a fertile text for examining the struggle and contestation present in the representations
of gender, race, class, and hip-hop itself contemporaneous to its mainstream
appropriation in the mid-80s. In doing so, Beat Street provides further evidence of the
earlier articulation of hip-hop as a set of cultural practices, an articulation of hip-hop
counter to its current dominant articulation as rap music culture typified by “gangsta” rap.
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CHAPTER 4:
THE MEDIAL METAPHOR: HIP-HOP AS MEDIA
Introduction
1
In this chapter I begin to use so-called technological determinist readings of
media to argue that hip-hop—more precisely, how hip-hop is defined now—is partly the
product of “structural” qualities of the particular forms of hip-hop themselves: the
elements of breaking, graffiti, DJing, and MCing. As already discussed in Chapters 2 and
3, the hip-hopsploitation film cycle demonstrates that the articulation of hip-hop to
emerge in the late 70s and early 80s linked breaking, graffiti, and DJing as the primary
practices of hip-hop. In this articulation of hip-hop MCing was relegated to a supporting
role, and thus, while still crucially linked to the music, hip-hop was nevertheless not
defined by it.
2
Instead, hip-hop was articulated as a subculture that cohered around a set
of cultural practices. By the end of the hip-hopsploitation film cycle, however, hip-hop
was rearticulated as a specifically musical culture, linking it primarily to rap music and
deemphasizing the connection to breaking, graffiti, and DJing as independently and
equally constitutive elements of hip-hop. This shift divides hip-hop into two distinct
articulations: Hip-hop as a set of cultural practices, and hip-hop as a music culture.
What is it about the particular characteristics of each element—breaking, graffiti,
DJing, and MCing—that made such a shift possible, or even necessitated it? By
theorizing the four elements as media technologies I place hip-hop within traditional
1
After this point I will no longer preface this term with “so-called” though it should
always be understood to be there.
2
It’s worth repeating the distinction I made in the introduction between some of these
terms. For the sake of clarity, I use rap/rapping to refer to the kind of MCing that already
included DJing. Since this form of DJing was an integral, but now dependent and nearly
indistinguishable part of MCing, I choose to simply use DJing in reference to the earlier
articulation of hip-hop rather than continually attempt to differentiate the two types of
DJing. Thus rap/rapping should be read as referring to primarily to MCing, but
secondarily DJing as well.
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studies of media and technology via the work of technological determinists like Marshall
McLuhan, Harold Adams Innis, and Friedrich Kittler who all sought to explain changes
in society through looking at changes in media technology. In this chapter I primarily
utilize the scholarship of Inns to argue that the distinct and opposing medial, or structural,
qualities of the elements primary to each articulation contributed to the shift from hip-hop
as a set of cultural practices to hip-hop as a musical culture defined by rap music. In the
next chapter, I will build on this through a deeper engagement with McLuhan and Kittler.
Rationalizing Determinism
In arguing that there are formal or inherent—material or medial—qualities about
the individual elements that “determine” how hip-hop would be rearticulated, I am aware
that I am putting forward a reading of hip-hop that may evoke anti-essentialist,
deconstructionist, or anti-determinist critiques. My reason for making such an argument
is both practical and political. Practically speaking, a structure provides me with
something to work within and against, even if that means ultimately destabilizing the
3
structure. Structure offers a starting point, an anchor, for a theoretical discussion about
hip-hop. Politically, I choose to focus on structure because there are very real power
structures that inform and even determine social, cultural, economic, and political
practices both generally and within hip-hop. The denial of these structures has a striking
parallel to the denial of such structural forms of discrimination that serve to locate racism
and other forms of discrimination as entirely a problem of individuals.
While there is no doubt a positive impulse behind making individuals culpable
and responsible for their particular discriminatory actions, it also restricts critique to the
micro-level, leaving in place the larger systems and structures that perpetuate, encourage,
and even require those actions. A more measured approach would instead offer a
3
Once more, that moment of “arbitrary closure” or the “touch of essentialism” necessary
for staking out a political or theoretical argument. (Hall “Cultural Studies and its
theoretical legacies,” 264; Hall “What is this ‘Black’ in Black Popular Culture?” 472).
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balanced critique and analysis at both the micro and macro levels, looking at the
structural elements as well as the particular cultural and social issues that play out within
those larger structures. In this chapter and the next I attempt to balance both the micro
and macro by examining the medial structures as well as the specific political economy of
media technologies at work, while in Chapter 6, I will do the same when analyzing the
social, particularly racial, forces that may have helped rearticulate hip-hop.
Hip-Hop History as a Narrative of Media Technology
As with cultural history in general, the dominant narrative of hip-hop has been
one of progress, linking its emergence in the Bronx in the early-70s to its current position
as a global and national powerhouse of economic, cultural, and even political influence as
a narrative of seamless evolution. The ensuing dominant paradigm of hip-hop history
carries with it two important assumptions about hip-hop. First, that the current form of
hip-hop is the result of a “natural” evolution, and second, that the shift from the earlier
form of hip-hop to the current hip-hop is progress. Both of these assumptions are in need
of critique for the way that such a neat and tidy narrative is necessarily the product of a
particular ideological position. While words like “evolution” and “progress” carry
positive valences, they are nevertheless subjective. It must be asked for whom such a
shift is progressive, as well as how it occurs. These assumptions also offer a productive
link to narratives of media evolution and technological progress, especially via the
technological determinist media theories of McLuhan, Innis, and Kittler.
To borrow graffiti as a metaphor, before painting such a critique—which I do in
this chapter and the next—I must first choose which colors to use, and prep the surface
with both primer and an outline. This chapter begins by doing just that, comparing and
contrasting the discourses of progress and evolution within the histories of both hip-hop
and media technologies. As a result, the history of hip-hop is productively reframed as a
narrative of media technology, uncovering some aspects of hip-hop that have been
largely over-looked. This also takes advantage of the relative wealth of scholarship
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dedicated to the study of media technologies in comparison to what’s available in the
relatively young field of hip-hop studies. Reframing hip-hop in this way illuminates
important medial characteristics of hip-hop and its constitutive elements, characteristics
that may help explain why hip-hop was rearticulated as rap music culture.
Rhetorics of Progress and the “Technological Sublime”
The rhetoric of progress that characterizes the historical narratives of hip-hop
mirrors what James Carey, borrowing a term from Leo Marx, calls the “Rhetoric of the
technological sublime” (Carey Communication as Culture: Essays on Media and Society
144). That is, the utopian ideal that advances in media technology will further advance
democracy, ultimately leading to the creation of John Dewey’s “great society.” Once the
new medium has been thoroughly commodified, this discourse shifts either to a
discussion of its marginalized but resistant uses or to a newer medium. Similarly, much
of the work on hip-hop puts forth a rhetoric about its potential to liberate the
disenfranchised, especially black male youth (for example Rose; Watkins Representing).
As touched on in the introductory literature review, texts on hip-hop seem initially to
focus on idealistic discussions of the highly political nature of hip-hop, and the way it
will inject urban—stereotypically conceived of as black—concerns into national politics.
As hip-hop becomes commodified, this gets lost and more of the discourse shifts to
discussing how to recuperate hip-hop, critiquing its commodification, incorporation,
and/or appropriation, or noting its moments of resistance—all generally done with a clear
sense of nostalgia for hip-hop’s untapped or unrealized political potential. Much of this
is evident in the hip-hopsploitation films themselves, with the final celebratory scene of
Beat Street being one example of hip-hop as political (idealistic), and the conflict about
“going mainstream” in Krush Groove being another (concern over commodification).
This is also evident in scholarship about hip-hop. As Murray Foreman notes in
the introduction to his co-edited hip-hop studies reader:
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The evolution of hip-hop corresponds with cultural theorist Raymond Williams’s
observation that the process of ‘formal innovation’ is gradual, and although
‘residual’ cultural practices from prior eras continue, new ‘emergent’ cultural
forms and practices may arise that challenge or disrupt the cultural dominant.
Hip-hop constitutes and emergent cultural form, but so, too, does early writing
about hip-hop. (Forman, "Part I" in Forman and Neal 9)
There are two important points here. First, there’s a clear parallel between the language
Williams uses in talking about emergent cultural forms—emergence, innovation, and
residual influence or previous cultural forms—and the way we talk about the emergence
of media technologies (For example, Kittler; McLuhan Understanding Media; McLuhan
"Laws of the Media"; Slack "Contextualizing Technologies"; Winthrop-Young "Drill and
Distraction in the Yellow Submarine: On the Dominance of War in Friedrich Kittler's
Media Theory"). Second, it’s a reference to the scholarly discourses about hip-hop, and
the way that it too reflects this trajectory of emergence. Forman later writes:
The emergence of academically oriented approaches to hip-hop culture is most
often traced to the 1984 publication of David Toop’s Rap Attack: African Jive to
New York Hip-Hop and Steven Hager’s Hip Hop: The Illustrated History of
Break Dancing, Rap Music, and Graffiti. They, and others in rapid succession,
presented a focused examination of the cultural contexts within which hip-hop
evolved and flourished. Though there was often a limiting sense of analytic scope
(with many early writers fixating on the culture’s marginal status, advancing
disputable claims about hip-hop’s ostensibly organic roots in a ghetto poverty that
were, so argued, disconnected from systems of commerce), these first scholarly
forays remain valuable to the contemporary perspective on how hip-hop was
viewed at the time and the prevailing sense of its impact and importance in that
nascent era” (Forman, "Introduction" in Forman and Neal 2).
From the beginning, then, the scholarly study of hip-hop has been concerned with this
traditional arch of cultural, or technological, emergence.
This is also reflected in many of the more journalistic works, for example the
tenor of Nelson George’s edited work Fresh: Hip-Hop Don’t Stop. Despite being a
collection of four essays by different authors, there is a common thread—reflected to
some degree in the title of the book—of concern for the way that mainstream culture is
appropriating hip-hop. In this concern is contained both a fear for its demise at the
corrupting hands of capitalism and a pre-commercial characterization of hip-hop,
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complete with the idealistic hope that hip-hop can overcome everything (George Fresh,
Hip Hop Don't Stop). This fits with the rhetoric of the technological sublime, where:
the growth of technology in general—the printing press, literacy, communications
technologies in particular—is seen as part of a larger narrative of progress. The
history of communications technology becomes the story of the expansion of the
powers of human knowledge, the steady democratization of culture, the
enlargement of freedom and the erosion of monopolies of knowledge, and the
strengthening of the structures of democratic politics. (Carey Communication as
Culture: Essays on Media and Society 147)
Like technology, hip-hop is seen as a democratizing force, not only empowering youth
and people of color, but also creating new opportunities for class mobility and economic
gain.
4
Evolutionary Rhetoric
The parallel between the narrative of hip-hop history and the rhetoric of the
technological sublime also emphasizes the assumption that the development of hip-hop is
the result of a “natural” evolution, much in the way that technology itself is seen to
function through the rules of Darwinian science (for example, see Adner and Levinthal).
In doing so, it helps erase the footprints of those forces that work to (re)articulate hiphop, and naturalizes a particular constellation of attached practices, histories, and
ideologies as following from this articulation in a linear and largely uncontested fashion.
As a result of the easy chronological line this draws, alternative historical models and
competing influences and ideologies are obscured. These same qualities, however, make
the application of articulation theory, with its concern for mystified ideology, or a
Foucauldian analysis, with its aim of uncovering marginalized narratives, all the more
4
One need only look at the way that hip-hop has been mobilized in service of get out the
vote drives, and presidential election campaigns in the last 10-15 years, though
interestingly it was conspicuously absent to this same degree during the recently election
of Obama—it leaves me wondering what role race, or the perception of race, plays in
this. I leave an examination of this to someone else, however, as it seems entirely
dissertation worthy on in its own right.
119
productive. In either case, the point is to explore how a particular narrative about an idea
or practice becomes naturalized as history and why.
In Friedrich Kittler’s Discourse Networks 1800/1900, the German media theorist
revised Foucault’s discursively determined “epistemic shifts” to be fundamentally shifts
in media technologies and practices. As Winthrop-Young writes, for Kittler, “all social,
cultural, and epistemological structures are the effect of the changing technological
means of mediation” (Winthrop-Young "Silicon Sociology, or, Two Kings on Hegel's
Throne? Kittler, Luhmann, and the Posthuman Merger of German Media Theory" 394).
Yet as also noted by Winthrop-Young, and evidenced in Kittler’s own writing, the
“medial a priori” that he favors as a determining force in social, cultural, and epistemic
change is quickly replaced by a “martial a priori.” That is to say, while Kittler locates
media as the force behind such changes, it is war that motivates the corresponding and
determining changes in media technology.
While there is a definite danger of perpetually reinscribing one a priori after and
over another, Winthrop-Young attempts to offer a possible point of fixture for Kittler’s
apparent martial approach to social, cultural, and epistemic change, explaining:
As a complex system, war appears to operate much like life itself; it engages in
the continuous extraction of information, it uses that information to devise
protocols for the further gathering of information and the subsequent extraction
and processing of material flows, and its developments depend on the degree to
which individual units (tribes, collectives, cooperations, armies, nations,
alliances) try to outdo each other. War—in the broadest sense of the word—has
always fuelled media, but it is only recently that the isomorphy between war and
basic processes of life appears to have become obvious. (Winthrop-Young "Drill
and Distraction in the Yellow Submarine: On the Dominance of War in Friedrich
Kittler's Media Theory" 845)
“War” as an a priori or determining force of social, cultural, and epistemic change is then
refigured as essentially a continuation of a “basic” and “natural” biological drive for
survival. In other words, these shifts are the result of a chain of determining forces that
ultimately link back to a Darwinian infused competition between different entities in the
form of media technologies.
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Winthrop-Young further characterizes Kittler’s connection of media/technology
and evolution when he writes:
The precondition for the interaction between social forms of organization and the
deployment of media technologies, then, is the ability to exploit—in
unpremeditated fashion—multifunctionality over time. That, however, is one of
the core features not only of evolution but of the very notion of evolvability. It
not only serves to remove any kind of foresight or teleological underpinnings
from history, it also emphasizes the degree to which [Kittler believes] that history
must be conceptualized in terms of punctuating discontinuities, and that media
technologies are fundamentally involved in bringing about and stabilizing basic
social change. (Winthrop-Young "Silicon Sociology, or, Two Kings on Hegel's
Throne? Kittler, Luhmann, and the Posthuman Merger of German Media Theory"
402)
The social, cultural, and epistemic fabric of existence is indelibly shaped by the available
media technologies. Any change in the direction of this fabric is thus the product of a
change in the available media technologies. The rules and forces governing these
changes are echoes of the same “natural” forces that, according to a Darwinian theory of
biology, determine the evolution of all forms of life.
Hip-hop is implicated by these rhetorics of progress, evolution, and the
technological sublime in two ways. First, through invocations of progress that parallel
the rhetoric of the technological sublime, hip-hop is interpolated into these same
discourses of evolution and technology. Second, through this interpolation—though not
dependent on it—the narrative history of hip-hop can be reexamined. Instead of
characterizing hip-hop’s cultural history as a smooth and unbroken progression from an
early-1970s Bronx, NY youth subculture to an internationalized mega-appendage of the
culture industry, it’s possible to expose the shifts, ruptures, contradictions, ideologies,
and other forces that help determine the shape of this history and, in the process,
naturalize a seemingly neutral narrative. A clearer understanding of how this narrative
has been constructed requires moving beyond the simile to the metaphor—hip-hop as not
only resembling media technology, but hip-hop as media technology.
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Hip-Hop as Media Technology
Looking at these competing articulations of hip-hop through the lens of technodeterminism illuminates some telling differences that help explain the dominance of hiphop as a musical culture. Reading hip-hop through techno-determinism means, first off,
placing hip-hop in the position of a culture or society more generally. Second, it means
redefining the constitutive elements of hip-hop—breaking, graffiti, MCing, and DJing—
as media technologies. For example, when articulated as a set of cultural practices, hiphop resembles what Innis and McLuhan might term an “oral” or “tribal” culture; it is
oriented around speech rather than writing as a medium. It is a time-binding culture with
a concern for the local. The internal emphasis is on temporal continuity within the
5
culture, while conflict is external, arising spatially with other cultures.
Innis believed that, “The use of a medium of communication over a long period
will to some extent determine the character of knowledge to be communicated and
suggest that its pervasive influence will eventually create a civilization in which life and
flexibility will become exceedingly difficult to maintain and that the advantages of a new
medium will become such as to lead to the emergence of a new civilization” (Innis The
Bias of Communication 34). In other words, since the structures of society are partially
determined by the available media of communication, the shift from an oral to a written
society is also dependent on a shift from the monopoly of one medium to another. Since
media forms are determining factors of socio-cultural formation, the above qualities of an
articulation of hip-hop as a set of cultural practices are themselves reflections of the
qualities of the media forms dominant within this culture. The articulation of hip-hop as
a set of cultural practices centers on breaking, graffiti, and DJing. As a result these three
5
In Innis’s work, oral/tribal traditions were “time-binding cultures: cultures with interests
in time—history, continuity, permanence, contraction; whose symbols were fiduciary—
oral, mythopoetic, religious, ritualistic; and whose communities were rooted in place—
intimate ties and a shared historical culture” (Carey Communication as Culture: Essays
on Media and Society 160).
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can be seen not solely as elements of hip-hop, but as forms of media. These media also
tend to emphasize time rather than space. In McLuhan’s terms, they are tactile, cool, low
definition, and requiring a higher degree of participation; “the receiver must complete the
image, must add values to what is presented to him and is thus more involved or
participational” (Carey "Harold Adams Innis and Marshall McLuhan" 23).
6
Since hot and cool are relational concepts, the “coolness” of breaking, graffiti,
and early DJing is in relation to rapping, the dominant “medium” of the articulation of
hip-hop as a music culture. As a medium, rapping is aural-visual, hot, high definition,
and requires less participation (Carey "Harold Adams Innis and Marshall McLuhan" 23).
Since rapping dominates the later articulation of hip-hop as a music culture in the form of
“gangsta” rap, it is consequently determined by the qualities of this media form. Hiphop as a music culture is thus a space-binding and written culture. Whereas the earlier
articulation was internally focused, the central concern for hip-hop as a musical culture
becomes externalized as an emphasis on the expansion of empire in space. The primary
source of conflict also shifts to become internalized; conflict is the result of tension
6
McLuhan made it difficult to see that this mode of classification was inherently
relational, and as a result, it is often critiqued. When framed relationally, hot and cool
become useful as comparative categories. Rather then thinking of hot and cool as
absolute categories or “independent entities” that describe media technologies, these
categories become descriptive of relationships or “differences,” to borrow terms from
German media theorist Niklas Luhmann (Winthrop-Young "Silicon Sociology, or, Two
Kings on Hegel's Throne? Kittler, Luhmann, and the Posthuman Merger of German
Media Theory" 406). This refiguring of hot and cool as relational is also internally
homologous; the categories themselves are already relational in that they refer to sense
perception ratios and intensities, the basis of McLuhan’s media theory. What’s important
about hot and cool as relational categories is that they take into account the historical
specificity of these relations. When McLuhan writes that “there is a basic principle that
distinguishes a hot medium like radio from a cool one like the telephone, or a hot
medium like the movie from a cool one like TV” (McLuhan Understanding Media 31),
he is calling attention to these as relational pairings, not examples of absolute categories.
Since people and societies have historically contingent relationships to media
technologies, they cannot be classified in absolute terms. While it makes sense to
compare the telegraph to the telephone in the late 19th century, or the telephone to the
radio in the early 20th century, or the radio to the television in the mid-20th century, the
comparison of the telegraph to television as media outside of history does not.
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between sub-groups—especially along temporal and generational lines—within the
culture rather than with other cultures.
Broadly sketched, this mapping of so-called technological determinist media
theory onto hip-hop history highlights some of the differences between the early and later
articulation of hip-hop in relation to their defining practices, as well as these practices as
media. However a more detailed and thorough examination of mid-1980s hip-hop
culture in terms of media will illuminate not only the differences between the two
articulations that bound the hip-hopsploitation film cycle, but more importantly, the
causes for and implications of the shift from one to the other. Turning the socio-analytic
mechanisms offered by the media theory of Innis and McLuhan to reading hip-hop rather
than “human civilization” uncovers some of the structural and material reasons for the
shift from hip-hop as a set of cultural practices defined by breaking, graffiti, and party
DJing, to hip-hop as a music culture defined by rap, and particularly gangsta rap. A more
detailed analysis first requires that the hip-hop elements be theorized as media.
Defining Media
In placing hip-hop within the so-called techno-determinist discourses as I do, I
interpolate the “four elements” of graffiti, breaking, DJing and MCing/rapping as media.
One of the advantages of using Innis and McLuhan—as well as Kittler, who I employ in
the next chapter—is that they support such an extension of “media;” questions of what
exactly constitute media were always foregrounded within their work. One particularly
useful definition comes in media scholar John Peters’ articulation of Kittler’s German
media theory to the theories of Innis. He writes, “German media theory extends Innis’s
claim that media are the strategies and tactics of civilization, the devices by which people
and other creatures hold together in time and space” (Peters 13). Important here is the
hybridization of Kittler’s German brand of techno-centric media theory with Innis’s focus
on the way these technologies are, to some degree, mediating time and space.
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Similarly, hip-hop, and its four constitutive elements, can be seen as a response to
time and space: the spatial and temporal conditions of the South Bronx. Returning to
some of the dominant narratives of hip-hop history, several scholars note how hip-hop is
a response to the urban decay and civic neglect that characterized the South Bronx in the
70s and much of the 80s. For example, Jeff Chang, in his comprehensive history of hiphop, Can’t Stop, Won’t Stop, devotes the entire first section to describing the urban
conditions of the Bronx, beginning as early as the 1960s. Titled “Babylon is Burning,”
the section details the destruction of a vibrant, culturally rich, and generally working to
lower-middle class Bronx community by the creation of the Cross-Bronx Expressway.
For Chang, the Cross-Bronx Expressway becomes emblematic of the city’s
marginalization and neglect of the Bronx, what he describes as a “politics of
abandonment” and later “containment” (Chang 7, 136). This and other “public” works
projects enacted by city planner Robert Moses were intended to facilitate direct travel
between the suburbs and the city’s financial and political centers, a response to and even
encouragement of “white flight,” effectively carving up the Bronx as it simultaneously
allowed New Yorkers to bypass the borough.
Even before Chang, early hip-hop scholarship consistently placed hip-hop within
the Bronx as a unique response to living in its deteriorating urban landscape. In her
pioneering study of hip-hop, Black Noise, scholar Tricia Rose makes a clear connection
between the rise of hip-hop and the post-industrial wasteland of the Bronx. Rose writes,
“Life on the margins of postindustrial urban American is inscribed in hip hop style,
sound, lyrics, and thematics. Situated at the ‘cross-roads of lack and desire,’ hip hop
emerges from the deindustrialization meltdown where social alienation, prophetic
imagination, and yearning intersect” (Rose 21). Building on Rose is Murray Forman’s,
The ‘Hood Comes First: Race Place and Space in Rap and Hip-Hop. As the title
suggests, Forman’s argument is largely premised on the idea that rap and hip-hop—
aspects of them if not their totality as cultural forms themselves—are a response to the
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spatial conditions of a racialized and ghettoized urban landscape. Also following Rose,
Mark Anthony Neal makes a similar connection between hip-hop and place. He asserts
that, “hip-hop may represent the last black popular form to be wholly derived from the
experiences and texts of the black urban landscape” (Neal 126). Like Chang and Rose,
Neal sees the roots of hip-hop as firmly embedded in the lived urban experiences of
youth of color. Hip-hop represented a way for urban black youth to “facilitate communal
discourse across a fractured and dislocated national community” (Neal 136). In other
words, hip-hop served as a medium through which young people of color in the Bronx
could hold themselves together in space.
In addition to discussing the centrality of space within the development of hiphop, Neal and other scholars have also noted the temporally contingent nature of hip-hop.
Scholars have linking it variously to post-Civil rights, post-soul, or post-Black
Power/Black Arts movements, as well as the fragile or deteriorated state of the Black
Public Sphere. For example, in his appropriately titled book, The Hip Hop Generation,
long-time hip-hop journalist Bakari Kitwana argues that hip-hop is the result of the
unique conditions faced by African-American’s at the tail end of the Civil Rights and
Black Power movements (Kitwana The Hip Hop Generation : Young Blacks and the
Crisis in African American Culture xiii). Further, in coining the term, “the hip-hop
generation” to describe African-American’s born between 1965 and 1984, Kitwana
explicitly ties hip-hop to a moment in history. Similarly, hip-hop scholar Todd Boyd
argues that hip-hop is a response to the socio-cultural climate of post-Civil Rights
America. Not simply because of the opportunities available to young people of color
following the end of legalized racial discrimination, but because of the continuation of
discrimination in subtler, if not less damaging, forms.
For Boyd, hip-hop is a response to the resulting ambivalence over strategies
centered on assimilation or isolation felt by a new generation of African-Americans in the
wake of civil rights. This is further complicated by subsequent violent crushing of Black
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Nationalist movements and the racist backlash of the Reagan/Bush years. Taking a
different tack, Neal connects hip-hop to a particular temporal context via the preceding
music forms and concurrent explosion of music production technologies (Neal 159).
Hip-hop is tied to history through its reliance on a production style centered on samples
of previously recorded soul and R & B sounds. In short, hip-hop coalesced as a set of
practices the youth of the Bronx could use to build a cohesive identity within the social,
political, economic, material, and even aesthetic conditions of a particular place and time:
the 1970s Bronx. In this way, hip-hop comes to reflect the definition of media given by
Peters in the quote above.
Culture as Media
When framed as a set of practices in this manner, the definition of hip-hop culture
begins to converge with that of media. This convergence is evident in the similarity of
Peters’ definition of media to Stuart Hall’s preferred understanding of “culture,” which
defines it through the specific practices that are themselves the products of the material
conditions that begin to define that group as a group. Hall wants a theory of culture that,
“looks, in any particular period, at those forms and activities which have their roots in the
social and material conditions of particular classes; which have been embodied in popular
traditions and practice” (Hall "Notes on Deconstructing 'the Popular'" 69). Here Hall
abandons the “anthropological” definition of culture that defines it so broadly as the way
of life of a people, “all those things ‘the people’ do or have done” (Hall "Notes on
Deconstructing 'the Popular'" 68). Hall bounds his definition of culture within the social
and material conditions of that group. The practices that make up a culture are not just
tied to the particular material conditions that define the group as such, but are actually
determined by those conditions. In other words, the material conditions of a group
determine its culture. Culture, then, is like media; both are determined by the particular
conditions (spatial and temporal, social and material) within which “the people” find
themselves. Hip-hop itself, as a kind of culture, by extension becomes a kind of media.
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A similar convergence of culture and media is evident in both McLuhan and
Hebdige’s reliance on linguistic concepts. In Hebdige’s work on subculture, he examines
the central role of style, which he further links to the specific “signifying practice” of a
particular subculture. This is in part similar to Hall’s notion of culture above, meaning
the way a group makes meaning or sense of its conditions and thus life, but it also
extends this to connect that practice of signification more explicitly to a process of
meaning making like style; or as Hebdige puts it, the relationship between “experience,
expression, and signification” (Hebdige 120). A subculture, according to Hebdige, is
defined by its distinct signifying practice, by the way it organizes meaning (signification)
to express its collective experience (i.e. style). Hebdige is essentially “languaging”
culture: making culture a function of a process of signification linked to linguistics and
semiotics.
Similarly, Carey links McLuhan’s media theory to a linguistic concept called the
Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, whereby meaning-making is shaped by the grammatical systems
of a given language. As Carey writes, “[McLuhan] argues that the grammar of a medium
derives from the particular mixture of the senses that an individual characteristically uses
in the utilization of the medium” (Carey "Harold Adams Innis and Marshall McLuhan"
16). In other words, the media, like language, shape the grammatical structure or our
thinking, and therefore, the ways we make sense of our world. McLuhan, like Hebdige,
is concerned with this relationship between experience, expression, and significance. By
splicing these parallel concerns together, we find that, as a kind of subculture, hip-hop
once again becomes a kind of medium: the signifying practice of culture becomes the
grammar of media.
Theoretically, then, the convergence between definitions of culture and media
make it possible to read hip-hop as medium qua culture, yet in practice, hip-hop also
already functions as a medium in many contexts. This is nowhere more evident than in
globalized and indigenous hip-hop. Despite early claims that hip-hop was too parochial
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to appeal to a global market—a claim that Negus points out was more likely informed by
the racist undertones of the music recording industry than any quality of the genre itself
(Negus 533)—hip-hop has been embraced across a wide variety of cultural contexts. As
Cristina Verán notes, “Indigenous youth around the world are rocking the planet anew,
fusing hip-hop’s expressive elements of MCing, DJing, b-boying, and aerosol graffiti art
with their own traditions of oratory, music, drumming, dance, and the visual arts” (Verán
et al. 278). Verán’s roundtable with indigenous artists from a variety of continents
exemplifies this medial function of hip-hop within a global setting.
In his comparative study of hip-hop in Frankfurt am Main, Germany and
Newcastle upon Tyne, England, Andy Bennet labels this kind of reappropriation of
globalized culture on a local level “glocalization” (Bennet 180). However I would argue
that these same qualities demonstrate hip-hop’s medial qualities. Glocalization is the
process through which a local culture appropriates the basic structure of a globalized
cultural product and inflects it with locally culturally-specific meaning and content.
What is also described here is the relationship between a medium and the ability of
different entities to use it to convey particular messages. As Verán’s roundtables reveals,
youth from across the globe find ways of using hip-hop for a number of different
purposes. Chilean-Mapuche MC JAAS raps in her native Mapuche as part of her attempt
to keep knowledge of indigenous traditions alive within her community. Mohammed
Yunus Rafiq, a member of the Tanzanian-Maasai hip-hop collective X-Plastaz, describes
the way that another indigenous African group from the Kilimanjaro region uses hip-hop
to educate Tanzania’s Chagga people about HIV and AIDS.
Similarly, Australian-Aboriginal b-boy and MC Grant Leigh Saunders discusses
the integration of standard breaking styles of dance with traditional Koori dances like the
“shake-a-leg,” or the use of Aboriginal instruments like the didgeridoo into Australian
hip-hop music. In contrast, groups like the Canadian-Cree War Party, or the New
Zealand-Maori Upper Hutt Posse use hip-hop for explicitly political ends, building
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support for native rights movements. In short, what this demonstrates is the way that hiphop and its constitutive elements function as media through which diverse social actors
can process information according to their particular needs. Once hip-hop and it’s
elements—breaking, graffiti, DJing, and MCing—are established as media, it is possible
to begin applying techno-deterministic theories for a more detailed analysis of these two
articulations of hip-hop: Hip-hop as a set of cultural practices versus hip-hop as a musical
culture.
Hip-Hop as a Set of Cultural Practices
Within the articulation of hip-hop that defines it through a set of cultural
practices, breaking, graffiti, and party DJing become the culture’s dominant forms of
media. These practices/media are in turn partly responsible for determining the social,
perceptual, and cognitive structures of that articulation of hip-hop. What follows is a
more detailed and thorough analysis of this early articulation of hip-hop as a set of
cultural practices using the media theories of Innis, McLuhan and Carey to examine
breaking, graffiti, and party DJing.
Hip-Hop and Orality
In the early articulation of hip-hop as a set of cultural practices, breaking, graffiti,
and DJing function as both media and cultural forms themselves. In both instances,
however, these cultural practices/media are strongly indicative of an oral, time-binding,
and “tribal” society. Synthesizing Innis and McLuhan, Carey offers a comprehensive
description of oral/tribal traditions:
Although speech is not the only means of communication in traditional societies,
it certainly is the principal means. Traditional societies are organized in terms of,
or are at least severely constrained by, certain features of speech. . .. Life in
traditional societies must be collective, communal, and celebrative as the medium
of communication requires it to be . . .. speech encourages the development of a
society with a strong temporal bias, a society which focuses on the past and which
emphasizes tradition, which attempts to conserve and preserve the existing stock
of knowledge and values. Such societies are likely to have limited conceptions of
space, conceptions restricted to the village or geographical area currently
occupied by the tribe . . .. Words become icons, they do not represent things, they
are themselves things. The care, nurture, and preservation of language is likely to
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occupy much collective energy of the society (Carey "Harold Adams Innis and
Marshall McLuhan" 10).
On the surface, it would seem difficult to argue that breaking, graffiti, and DJing are
essentially oral, or at least indicative of an oral culture, when rapping is more strictly and
objectively oral. Rapping is defined precisely as the distinct vocal accompaniment to
hip-hop music. However when framed literally rather than strictly—thinking about
speech in terms of its relationship to writing and literacy—it’s clear that breaking,
graffiti, and DJing are functions and examples of oral culture because they are expressly
not written.
Tricia Rose offers one option for parsing out these distinctions. She asserts that
rap is partly what theorist Walter Ong refers to as “post-literate orality:” a form of oral
culture that has been profoundly influenced and structured by the advanced technologies
of a literate world (Rose 86). Ong, a student of McLuhan, developed post-literate orality
as a means of nuancing McLuhan’s idea that the electric age had returned us to an oral
culture. He developed this new orality believing that once a culture was literate, it was
impossible to return to orality in its purist, pre-literate sense. Further, post-literate
orality, in the words of Rose, “has the capacity to explain the way literate-based
technology is made to articulate sounds images and practices associated with orally based
forms, so that rap simultaneously makes technology oral and technologizes orality” (Rose
86). Rose is specifically referring to the utilization of sampling, both as a practice and a
technology, in rap music production. Simultaneously, she is attempting to acknowledge
the important influence of earlier African-American oral traditions on rap music.
While Rose is conditional in her identification of rap with post-literate orality,
Erik Pihel is not. He clearly labels rap as post-literate, locating rap within the same
African-American oral traditions as Rose and further asserting that, “Most rap music is
pre-written and meant to be performed: a post-literate poetry” (Pihel 250). There are
several problems, however, with Pihel’s claim. While there is not doubt that rap is
influenced by earlier forms of African-American oral culture, he mistakes this influence
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as determining. This is partly a function of the very rearticulation of hip-hop that I am
exploring in this dissertation. For Pihel, as well as for Rose, hip-hop is already
articulated through rap music, thus the qualities that appear to be primary or deterministic
will be shaded by the assumption that hip-hop is synonymous with rap, a point I’ll take
up again below. Further, Pihel succumbs to a kind of “intentional fallacy,” to borrow a
term from literary theorist W.K. Wimsatt. Pihel is basing much of his claim on what he
perceives as the intended purpose of rap. Since he views the intended purpose as being
oral, even though it is first written, hip-hop is post-literately oral culture.
Rose addresses both issues later in her discussion of rap and orality. She writes,
“the oral aspects of rap are not to be understood as primary to the logic of rap nor
separate from its technological aspects. Rap is fundamentally literate and deeply
technological. To interpret rap as a direct or natural outgrowth of oral African-American
forms is to romanticize and decontextualize rap as a cultural form” (Rose 95). Her
emphasis on the logic that organizes rap is important, for it highlights the way that,
despite being aural, it is nevertheless structured literally. In other words, it is the logic of
rap music production itself that is deterministic, not the influence of a prior oral legacy,
nor rap music’s performative intent.
What’s more, even if the intent of rap does determine its orality, Pihel assumes
that rap is meant to be performed. While there was a point in the history of rap music
when this was true, that time passed rather quickly. I have previously made a distinction
between MCing, which I identify with early party-based hip-hop DJing, and rapping,
which I identify with commercialized rap music. Along those lines, a more accurate
statement would be to say that MCing is a function of post-literate orality, while rapping
is not. Once rapping is defined via commercialized music production, the intent is no
longer to perform the music live, but to commodify and sell it, a process that requires a
fixed material object. At first glance, this would seem to turn the relationship of live and
recorded music on its head, however, as Phil Auslander has remarked, this relationship is
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7
in fact already inverted. While there remains a residual cultural identification of the live
performance as more authentic qua originality, in fact, with the popularization of
recording technologies, it is recorded music that has become the original (Auslander
"Seeing Is Believing: Live Performance and the Discourse of Authenticity in Rock
Culture" 1-2). The live performance is really the performance of recorded music, rather
than being a reiteration of the music recorded.
This is not to invalidate live performance, since, strictly speaking, the
commodified musical object is literally the product of a moment of musical performance
in the studio. However, if we are following Pihel’s concern, the intention in this moment
is not the performance itself—with the exception of recordings of live music that are
8
relatively rare in rap music —but the product of that performance in the form of
recorded, commodified, music. The more significant function of live performance,
according to Auslander, is that it often serves as a way of lending “authenticity” to
recorded music. Synthesizing both points he writes, “live performance serves to
authenticate the recording but does not function explicitly as its originary referent; live
performance can and does authenticate the recording in the absence of any claim that the
7
While Auslander is referring specifically to rock music, his argument is based on both
the relationship of recording technologies to music production and consumptions, the
state of which are similar in the case of hip-hop. Thus, his discussion of performed and
recorded music can be extended to hip-hop as well.
8
Though interestingly, they are much more prevalent in DJing. The one exception of
this being the improvisational form of rapping known as “freestyling.” However even
this fits within the bounds of the current discussion. In many ways, freestyle functions
much as the live performance does within rap—it serves as a way of authenticating
recorded music by increasing the subcultural capital of the recording artist. In this sense,
rapping incorporates freestyling within its logic in much the way it does DJing; while in
and of itself, freestyling, like DJing, may be more accurately read as oral, its subordinated
position within rapping make it part of literate rap culture (Human beat boxing might be
read in a similar way). At the same time, the juxtaposition of freestyling and rapping as
two forms of MCing can also further support my claim that rapping is literate, since the
primary difference between the two is the fact that the former is improvisational while the
latter is pre-written. It’s worth once again referencing the earlier distinction drawn
between DJing and MCing/rapping as I use them in this dissertation.
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recording is of that particular performance” (Auslander Liveness: Performance in a
Mediatized Culture 103-04). This role of authenticating recorded music is important,
however as Auslander also notes, it is not a function of any inherently different value for
either, but rather a matter of “symbolic capital.” He writes:
The fact that the live performance is worth greater symbolic capital than the
recording may seem to belie the idea that the recording is the dominant cultural
form, but I don’t think it does. The very fact that one can compare the relative
symbolic values of live and mediatized performances shows that they carry the
same kind of value—the kind Walter Benjamin calls exhibition value…. [L]ive
performances of popular music are of greater symbolic value than recordings
because they offer an experience that is more rare and less accessible than do
recordings, not because they offer a fundamentally different kind of experience.
(Auslander "Music as Performance: Living in the Immaterial World" 265-66)
What makes the live performance different is the fact that it is more exclusive than the
experience of listening to recorded music.
The exclusivity of the live performance not only serves to authenticate recorded
music, but to promote it as a commodity. The experience of live music, because it’s
“constructed to lack plenitude,” requires the consumer to then “seek out the sound
recording,” as a means of completing the experiences begun by the performance
(Auslander Liveness: Performance in a Mediatized Culture 92). In short, the live
performance serves as an extended commercial for commodified, recorded, music. Thus,
for the purposes of my analysis, the live performance of music is not primary, as Pihel
argues, but secondary to its commodified form (recorded music). Pihel’s assertion that
rap as post-literate poetry, and even Rose’s conditional identification of rap with postliterate orality, fail to recognize this fact and instead conflate the aurality of music with
orality. In doing so, they overemphasize the oral influence of rap and deemphasize the
essentially literate “logic” of rap and the central importance of the music as commodity
9
over the moment of live performance.
9
In addition, since this dissertation is most concerned with the articulation of hip-hop as
it emerged in mainstream society, it is the “plenitude” of the commodified form that is
most important, not the “authenticity” of the live music performance.
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Leaving the “logic” or rap aside, there are more compelling medial qualities that
supports the designation of breaking, graffiti, and DJing as oral, and rapping as literate.
For example, recordability. One of the definitive and relevant differences between oral
and written media is the issue of recordability—or, put differently, how faithfully and
accurately it can be represented. In its struggle to use signs to process data, writing fixes
signs in time and space when speech does not. Similarly, graffiti, breaking, and party
DJing, especially during the point in the mid-1980s that this study focuses on, are media
that cannot be recorded, while rapping can. This is not just a result of deficiencies in
media technology at the time, but a function of the particular qualities of breaking,
graffiti, and DJing. All three have key components that are extra-textual. Namely, they
are fundamentally experiential media. As experiential media, they eschew literacy by not
only requiring direct interaction that is immediate in a way foreign to literacy—where
meaning is represented via signs—but also contain qualities that cannot be recorded
easily by the technologies widely available at the time. This is not to say that attempts to
record these elements did not happen, merely that these attempts failed to fully capture
graffiti, breaking, or DJing since they were unable to also capture their experiential
aspects.
10
Thus while we can obviously see representations of all three in the hip-
hopsploitation films, these representations are less complete than the recording of a rap
song on vinyl; film cannot capture this extra-textual, experiential quality of breaking,
graffiti, and DJing. While I will return to the experiential nature of these elements in a
moment, I take up the availability of technology in the next chapter.
It’s nevertheless important to emphasis now, however, that breaking, graffiti, and
DJing are fundamentally oral in the sense that they are resistant to the very process of
10
All three have also been increasingly captured since the 80s with the rise of home
video, but especially with DVD and internet related digital video. However, since my
discussion is about the 80s, when the latter two technologies did not exists and the former
was not fully saturated in the marketplace—as I’ll discuss in the next chapter—I am
referring to the state of the elements and technologies in their particular 1980s context.
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inscription that makes writing literate. Graffiti is perhaps the most difficult of the three to
understand as oral rather than written culture, since on the surface it deals with spraypainting words and pictures on subway cars. Despite this, graffiti is nearly as fleeting as
speech. The inscriptions of a tag, piece, or throw-up are no more recorded than a
sandcastle at the ocean’s edge. Graffiti, especially the kind of graffiti linked to hip-hop,
is indelibly tied to the subway system. Through this, both the response of the New York
City Metropolitan Transit Authority and other writers competing for space work to erase
or go over a particular piece of graffiti. This is clear not only in the documentary Style
Wars, but in almost all of the hip-hopsploitation films that feature graffiti. As already
discussed in Chapter 3, Ramo’s death in Beat Street comes as the result of his feud with
the competing graf-writer, Spit, who continually “goes over” Ramo’s pieces. It’s also
captured in the conflict between graf-writer and MTA. As depicted in Beat Street, Wild
Style, and Turk 182, the constant policing and repainting of the train cars creates both a
scarcity of new writing spaces—forcing writers to go over each other—and a transitory
quality to each piece. This last characteristic is further emphasized by the rush to
photograph pieces before they’re painted over.
Even when frozen in a photograph, however, there is a failure to inscribe graffiti.
Each piece is a kind of performance that’s tied to the experience of seeing the piece on
the train as it passes by. This sentiment is also reflected in one of graffiti’s ultimate
goals, to go “all-city,” which means to have one’s pieces be seen on trains circulating in
all five of New York’s boroughs. Simultaneity is a temporal quality, indicative of a timebias in the words of Innis. As a result, graffiti is essentially experiential, and can’t be
captured by a photo. Further, it highlights the particularity of the geography; the way that
graffiti in the 1970s and early-80s was explicitly tied to a limited space. While concerned
with space, going all-city conceptualizes space in a limited and localized fashion
consistent with oral traditions. In this sense, graffiti is a ritual, not a piece of writing.
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Like breaking and DJing, which are both similarly experiential and medially oral, graffiti
is not the product of literate culture, but of orality.
Hip-Hop as an Oral Tradition
The articulation of hip-hop as a set of cultural practices is also clearly oral in
nature when looked at through the social structures that organize breaking, graffiti, and
DJing. This is Innis’s soft technological determinism, where the dominance of particular
media forms made possible particular social structures. Breaking and graffiti especially,
but also DJing, share many of the characteristics of an oral tradition as described by
Innis. For example, “The recitation of artistic works within the oral tradition was a social
ceremony which linked audiences to the past and celebrated their social cohesion in the
present. While individual performers would modify an oral tradition to make it more
serviceable in present circumstances, they began with the tradition and thus became
indissolubly linked to it” (Carey "Harold Adams Innis and Marshall McLuhan" 11). Oral
traditions placed importance in maintaining continuity in time. As a result, oral traditions
are characterized by a tendency to build vertically, relying on—and respecting—the work
done by those that came before.
This is reflected in early breaking, graffiti, and DJing practices. All three
practices—much more so than rapping—build on themselves to a significant degree.
DJing is the most obvious example of this. Refiguring the above quote, we can see that
the DJ’s mixing worked to connect the audience to a musical past while simultaneously
creating a sense of social unity. As Public Enemy’s “Media Assassin”, Harry Allen,
wrote, DJing is primarily about rock’n the party and, in the process, uniting the crowd to
prevent violence (Allen 8). The development of DJing, it’s evolution, is marked by
cycles of invention and appropriation. When a DJ invented a new move, it would soon
be appropriated and reinvented by another DJ. A good example is Herc’s initial
“invention” of the merry-go-round, the switching back and forth between the same
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sample of a song on two turntables, thereby extending it indefinitely.
11
As this was
appropriated by people like Flash, the merry-go-round was reinvented as beat juggling,
where different samples from different songs were remixed together into a composition.
This was further refined by the addition of scratching to ease the transition between
songs, as well as the appropriation and revision of scratching to serve “as a distinct
percussive and rhythmic form in its own right” (Forman "Forman Comments on Your Hh
Chapters"). We can also see the merry-go-round at the roots of many modern turntablism
techniques, for example, the quick cutting back and forth between turntables with
identical but slightly off-set samples to create an echo or repeat effect.
DJing—as well as breaking and graffiti—builds on itself in this manner, bridging
past and present, partly because of the particular social structure common to oral
traditions. According to Innis, the social dynamics within a culture were determined in
part by the bias for either time or space that a culture had as a result of their media. All
three elements central to hip-hop as a set of cultural practices organize themselves around
a collective unit with temporally biased concerns. In breaking, graffiti, and party DJing
cultures, this manifested as hierarchies based on age. Yet despite the power imbalances
that come with such hierarchies, there was nevertheless an overriding alliance within
each practice that transcended age. In the words of Carey, once more channeling Innis
within oral and temporally-biased cultures “conflict [between age groups] occurred
within a system of shared attitudes and values and within a system of mutual
dependencies across age groups” (Carey "Harold Adams Innis and Marshall McLuhan"
30). In other words, while age was a primary category of differentiation within the
11
This is a contestable claim since it’s likely that when Herc moved from Jamaica to the
US as a child, he brought many of the related skills and techniques, including the
powerful mobile sound-systems, that formed the basis of DJing culture. Even so, the
equation of invention and appropriation I’m describing is the same, merely being
extended back another few steps to others in Jamaica from whom Herc may have
appropriated the practices and consequently expanded on as part of the creation of DJing
culture.
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culture, it helped the culture cohere together as such when placed in opposition to other
surrounding cultures.
12
While there were certainly conflicts across age groups within breaking, graffiti,
and party DJing, these conflicts remained largely individual and local. For example, the
local disapproval many early graffiti writers faced from their families was paltry when
compared to the conflict between graffiti writers and the MTA and NYC government—
entities that were arguably not local given the disenfranchisement of the Bronx
community from which hip-hop was springing at the time. This distinction is most
obviously evident in the graffiti documentary Style Wars, which prominently features the
critique of one graffiti writer’s mother—clearly centered on her concern for his safety
rather than a dislike for graffiti itself—is overshadowed by the vehemence with which the
mayoral, police, and MTA representatives attack graffiti. The difference in these
conflicts is similarly depicted in several of the fictional hip-hopsploitation films. In Wild
Style, Lee Quiñones’ graffiti-writing brings him into conflict with his older brother, while
Beat Street and Breakin’ 2 both feature fathers critical of their children’s involvement in
graffiti and breaking respectively. However these conflicts are ultimately resolved in the
face of more pressing dangers felt at the hands of cultural outsiders, whether they be
transit authority police, or rich white land developers and corrupt city officials. As I’ll
discuss more below, rapping, in contrast, was more widely accepted across communities,
while primarily coming into conflict from members identifying from within the
12
We can also think about this in terms of vertical and horizontal. In an oral and
temporally-biased culture, the internal structure is defined vertically, while the external is
defined horizontally. Meaning. The culture is defined internally by all of the categories
of people occupying one vertical space, including all levels of the social hierarchy (age,
class, race, etc). Externally, the defining quality is horizontal, as the culture defines itself
against other cultures occupying the surrounding place. This is contrasted with a literate
or spatially-biased culture that is internally horizontal and externally vertical. In such a
culture, the particular place one occupies in the hierarchy determines your culture
regardless of the place one occupies in space. So age, race, class, and so forth become
vertically stratified and conflict occurs between these different levels across horizontal
space.
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community, as anti-rap crusaders like C. Dolores Tuckers and the Reverend Calvin Butts
demonstrate.
In addition to the dynamics of social conflicts within breaking, graffiti, and party
DJing, the structures of social cohesion also mark these elements as oral and time-biased
cultures. In such cultures, “The continuity of culture was maintained by a shared,
collective system of ritual and by the continuity of passage rites marking off the entrance
of individuals into various stages of the life cycle” (Carey "Harold Adams Innis and
Marshall McLuhan" 30). Such structures are key in all three of the elements of hip-hop
articulated as a set of cultural practices. Early party DJing, for example, was defined by
the presence of crews that were themselves organized around individual DJs. The DJ
was the nucleus of each crew, and the other members served complimentary functions
ranging from security to technical/sound system assistance and even early MCing. This
structure was also crucial in perpetuating DJing culture as many new DJs found their start
within the crews of already established DJs. Grandwizard Theodore, the inventor of
scratching, got his start as the protégé of Grandmaster Flash. Theodore’s older brother
was a member of Flash’s crew, and Flash would store his DJ equipment in Theodore’s
house. Theodore would sneak into the room and play with the records when Flash wasn’t
around and mimic what he learned from watching Flash. Eventually, Theodore’s brother
convinced Flash to let Theodore audition. Flash was impressed enough with his skill to
take him on as a member of his crew, though Theodore soon left and formed his own,
rival crew.
More so than DJing, however, breaking and graffiti exemplify the internal social
structures of oral traditions as described in the work of Innis. Both breaking and graffiti
cohere around mutual dependent age groups that are internally well delineated even if
externally this distinction may in places seem slight. In graffiti, this manifests as the
pseudo-apprenticeships of inexperienced younger writers with older established ones.
One example is the relationship between Trap1 and Dez documented in Style Wars. Dez,
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an already established writer at 16 years-old, has taken Trap1, who’s 14 years-old, under
his wing. Dez provides him with outlines so that he can practice and hone his skills, and
considers him “like a son” (Silver and Chalfant). Though the age difference may seem
negligible by most standards, it’s significant within their relationship. As Dez says, “by
the time he get my age, he’ll be like one of the best people out” (Silver and Chalfant),
marking their two year difference as decisive. It’s also evident in the way the two
interact, Trap1 clearly deferring to Dez’s seniority without complaint. Even when Dez
critiques Trap1’s work, saying that he “can’t let [Trap1] go for at least 5 minutes or he’ll
destroy the piece” (Silver and Chalfant), Trap1 just chuckles in embarrassed agreement,
acquiescing to the importance of following Dez’s outlines.
The relationship captured in Style Wars is part of a distinction made within
graffiti culture between what they call “toys” and “writers.” As graffiti scholar Janice
Rahn writes:
Taggers who never produce large pieces are called Scribblers and Toys and have
little status. In the mid-1980s, graffiti writers set standards and mutually
acknowledged a level of skills that had to be reached to merit the title of writer
rather than the inferior toy (Farrell, 1997). A toy is a person who attempts graf
without skills or the commitment to learn from other writers. A toy has not paid
his dues and is not respected. A toy’s work is wack: lacking in skills and
obviously inferior. Writers like to distinguish themselves from taggers. One
becomes a writer when he or she has developed an individual style within the
tradition of hip-hop. The writer has developed painting skills to a lever where the
community accepts his or her presence and work. (Rahn 5).
The transition from toy to writer is most easily achieved through a relationship like Dez
and Trap1’s that resembles an apprenticeship where, as the narrator of Style Wars says,
“its traditions are handed down from one youthful generation to the next” (Silver and
Chalfant). The development of one’s style comes with the help of an experienced writer,
an association that also allows the toy to more quickly transition to writer by avoiding
many of the mistakes common to beginning and inexperienced individuals. Further,
acceptance into the community of graffiti writers is more easily accomplished when an
already well respected and established writer can attest to the proper level of skill. The
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outlines that Dez provides Trap1 are part of the ritualized rites of passage that Trap1 must
undergo as part of this process. It is not just skill that will allow Trap1 to eventually gain
acceptance as a writer, but his association with the skill and reputation of Dez.
13
Age plays a similarly important role in the social structures of breaking. Like
graffiti, breaking is often learned via an already established practitioner. As early hiphop historian and journalist Martha Cooper said, “there’s a system of apprentices: a ‘Lil’
Crazy Legs with a Crazy Legs” (Crossette C7). This is echoed in the explanation given
by ‘Lil’ Crazy Legs himself when asked about his name in the breaking documentary,
The Freshest Kids. As he describes it, he was beginning to break when he met Crazy
Legs, a founder of one of the most famous breaking crews, New York’s the Rock Steady
Crew. Though only a few years older, Crazy Legs was such a talented dancer that ‘Lil’
Crazy Legs decided he “wanted to adapt that style” and learn from him. When he joined
the Rock Steady Crew to learn from Crazy Legs, he took the name ‘Lil’ Crazy Legs to
signify his discipleship. As with graffiti, “style” is developed by individual dancers, and
then learned and adapted by others. In breaking, if that appropriation is done by an
outsider or someone that hasn’t yet established him or herself sufficiently, it’s called
13
It’s also arguable that the conflict between Cap and the other graffiti writers in Style
Wars—fictionalized in Beat Street as the conflict between Spit and Ramo—is indicative
of an oral and time-biased culture. Cap gains notoriety for tagging his name over the
work of other writers. Not only does this upset the writers because it destroys their work,
but it seems to upset the whole graffiti community for the way shows a lack of respect for
the seniority and skill of established writers. The poor quality of Cap’s tag and the
destruction of better looking pieces are probably enough to make the rest of the graffiti
community angry, but it’s the violation of graffiti culture’s internal social hierarchy that
appears to be the most important factor.
Similarly, Cap’s stated goal is to go over as many pieces as possible, and to
spread his name as far and wide as possible. In essence, he’s interested in quantity not
quality. Not only does this again seem to violate the dominant paradigm of graffiti
culture, but it also reflects an important difference between a time-biased and spacebiased culture. Cap is not interested in maintaining graffiti’s socio-historical continuity
by building one the work of those that have come before him—a temporal concern for
quality—but in erasing that history in his attempt to spread his name—a spatial concern
for quantity. The incompatibility of Cap and the graffiti culture establishment reflect the
inherent conflict between space and time-biased—literate and oral—cultures, a conflict I
will return to shortly.
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“biting:” an unoriginal copy. In this sense, “style” becomes both the signature moves of
a particular dancer as well as a measure of ability that places one within the hierarchy of
the crew.
Like both graffiti and DJing, breaking evolved its crew-based social structure as a
response to the crumbling gang culture of the Bronx and surrounding inner-city NY
14
areas.
While early graffiti and DJing cultures involved competitive crews, that
15
competition was not as direct as it is in breaking, where rival crews routinely met to
“battle” each other through dance. Breaking battles feature prominently in several of the
hip-hopsploitation films, including the Beat Street scene described in Chapter 3 and
scenes in both Wild Style and Style Wars. Though Style Wars focuses largely on graffiti,
there is are several extended segments on breaking, including a narrated battle between
one of the most famous breaking crews, the Rock Steady Crew, and their rivals, the
Dynamic Rockers. The conflict stems from two primary sources. First, there is the
expected competition over which crew is the best.
However beyond the typical push for supremacy, the conflict also arises from the
Rock Steady Crew’s belief that the Dynamic Rockers are “biting” the Rock Steady style.
In other words, there has been a break from the established social hierarchy. At least in
the eyes of the Rock Steady Crew the younger, upstart, Dynamic Rockers have
appropriated moves from the older, more experienced, Rock Steady Crew, without proper
permission; they’ve disrespected the old-guard and need to be put in their place. Proper
14
While not necessarily “oral,” gangs are inherently “tribal” on a social level. Since
Innis and McLuhan both equated oral and tribal culture, this connection between the early
hip-hop practices and their gang predecessors is an important one.
15
I make this generalization fully aware that battles between DJ crews with MC was
common during the early development of MCing. The battle between the Cold Crush
and the Fantastic Five in Wild Style is a perfect example of this. However, it was a
relatively short-lived phase in DJing as MCing began to break away as its own,
independent element, and with each simultaneously becoming more individual.
Breaking, on the other hand, has always had crew based battling as a central component.
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respect for “elders” is a key component of an oral/tribal culture, and this remains true for
breaking. As another early Rock Steady breaker and longtime hip-hop historian Jorge
“Pop Master Fable” Pabon writes, “The pioneers of these dance forms hold the key to the
history and intentions of the movement. They remain the highest authorities, regardless
of other opinion or assumptions” (Pabon 25). Here Pabon exposes his conviction that the
pioneers of breaking, its early and original practitioners, are the ultimate authorities of
breaking. Power within breaking culture stems from seniority—it is based on time—not
an ability to innovate, as would be the case in a social structure based on space.
Pabon’s history of hip-hop dancing also reveals another facet of breaking culture
that aligns it with oral traditions: place. As already noted above, conflict in oral
traditions manifested as differences in space. Part of what maintains temporal continuity
and mutual reliance between age groups within the culture is place. To repeat my earlier
quotation of Carey, oral cultures are ”cultures with interests in time—history, continuity,
permanence, contraction; whose symbols were fiduciary—oral, mythopoetic, religious,
ritualistic; and whose communities were rooted in place—intimate ties and a shared
historical culture” (Carey Communication as Culture: Essays on Media and Society 160).
Pabon goes great lengths to note the geographic specificity of hip-hop dance. Not only
were rival crews—much like the gangs that preceded them—generally located in distinct
geographic areas, making their rivalries also geographic, but many of the dance styles
that would become absorbed by breaking under the media term “breakdancing,” were
also from specific regions. Different cities, regions, and even coasts had their own dance
styles that were often competing. It was only in the rush to commercialize breaking that
the geographic specificity of each style was erased. One of the key differences between
an oral culture and a literate one is precisely the facility with which the latter is
commercialized while the former is not, a matter I will return to shortly.
Breaking, graffiti, and party DJing, and thus hip-hop via their articulation to it as
a set of cultural practices, all exhibit traits that overwhelmingly align them with what
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theorists like Innis, McLuhan, and Carey would term an oral culture. On a medial level,
breaking, graffiti, and party DJing are all ephemeral; by resisting inscription—or by
containing essential elements that are fundamentally resistant to inscription—they are
classified as oral cultures rather than written/literate ones. This means that socially,
continuity is established via a system of apprenticeships and a reverence for the
experience of “elders.” These social structures are consistent with those typical to
breaking, graffiti and party DJing, while differing from those common to rapping.
Hip-Hop as Rap Music
In contrast to the earlier articulation of hip-hop with Breaking, Graffiti, and DJing
as a set of cultural practice, hip-hop had become rearticulated around MCing in the form
of “rap music” by the end of the hip-hopsploitation film cycle. While the early form of
hip-hop resembled an oral or tribal culture, with its connected emphasis on time, ritual,
and continuity, this later form resembled a written culture, with its attendant concern for
space, empire, and technical achievement. Summing up some of the major differences
between written and oral traditions, Carey writes:
[Written traditions] were usually space-binding and favored the growth of
political authority and secular institutions and a culture appropriate to them . . ..
Written traditions and their appropriate culture ground relations among men not
on tradition but on attachment to secular authority. Rather than emphasizing the
temporal relations among kinship, written tradition emphasizes spatial relations.
Rather than emphasizing the past, it emphasizes the present and the future,
particularly the future of empire. Rather than emphasizing knowledge grounded in
moral order, it emphasizes the technical order and favors the growth of science
and technical knowledge. Whereas the character of storage and reception of the
oral tradition favor continuity over time, the written tradition favors discontinuity
in time through continuity over space” (Carey "Harold Adams Innis and Marshall
McLuhan" 11-2).
Just as DJing, breaking, and graffiti line up with this description of an oral tradition, so
does rapping clearly fit as a written one.
As already discussed, I use rapping to refer to the particular articulation of MCing
and DJing that would become commercialized rap music. Both rapping and rap music
are distinct from party DJing as discussed in the previous section. In rapping the central
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figure is the MC or rapper, and while early on it was common for the MC or MCs to be
accompanied by a DJ, in later rap music, the DJ was replaced by a producer. Similarly,
in early party DJing, there was often a crew of MCs that would hype the crowd for the
DJ. The key difference is the reversal of primary and support roles in each articulation.
That said, when I refer to rapping, I am referring to the tradition of MCing that has its
roots in accompanying that early party DJing. Understanding this distinction is
important, since it’s in the shift from an MCing that was part of a DJ-driven party to an
MCing that was the driving force in the music, that we most clearly see how rapping is
written and not oral culture.
16
Rapping as Literate Culture
Demonstrating how rapping is literate or written culture is best done through a
partially comparative lens, highlighting the differences between rapping/written culture,
and the articulation of hip-hop I have shown above as oral culture. In contrast to the
collective and tribal social structures tied principally to time that I discussed with graffiti,
breaking, and party DJing, the social structures of rapping oppose time in favor of space.
Whereas the earlier articulation of hip-hop as a set of cultural practices appropriated the
social structures of the fading Bronx gangs, this was less the case as rapping developed.
Though initially a group or crew thing, rapping quickly winnowed itself down to trios,
duos, and solo acts. The predominant ethos of rap music is not collective, but
individualistic. Rather than work towards the good of the whole or even group, it is
about individual success. In this sense, there’s a striking contrast with the way breaking,
graffiti, and early DJing was based on a social hierarchy that placed the good of the
culture itself as paramount. While these required respect for “elders,” and even a type of
16
As noted earlier, this distinction also helps us make sense of how freestyling fits into
this oral-literate system; freestyling is part of MCing rather than rapping, and even when
it is featured within rap music, it plays a support role in much the same way that DJing
does.
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apprenticeship in many cases—the emphasis on “kinship relations” that Carey mentions
above—rapping was based on an opposing drive for individual superiority and an often
explicit disregard for already established MCs. Whereas graffiti, breaking, and DJ all
included a distinct reverence for the past, rapping has generally been disdainful of the
past, opting instead to focus on the now, and what is possible in the future.
While all of the elements do include at least some emphasis on technical
advancement and innovation, rapping does so amorally, unanchored to the temporal
context of such innovations. Despite the ever-present competitive components of
breaking, graffiti, and early DJing, the pursuit of technical achievement has remained
couched within respect for the backs upon which that achievement is made possible.
This is competition in its truest sense: a mutual striving for improvement that uplifts
everyone, not just the individual. Rapping, on the other hand, is almost anti-historical. It
doesn’t just float free from historical ties, but often places itself in opposition to its earlier
incarnations. Sampling is perhaps one place where this critique is limited, since the
practice of sampling within rap music production is frequently analyzed as being as
reverential as it is referential. Not only does this once again interpolate DJing into rap
music, but also makes it clear that rap does not evacuate a temporal concern for history
completely. Similarly, neither does the presence of sampling within rap music
production negate the parallel between rapping and written/literate culture. First,
sampling is largely an influence of DJing that has remained a part of rapping. Second,
that influence has diminished substantially over time, with sampling becoming a less
important aspect of rapping.
17
17
Thus, once again, the general ethos or rap culture, or its
This is bound to be a contentious point with some, but I’d argue that sampling—which
was also much more pronounced as part of the “music” rather than “rap” part of rap
music—has steadily decreased within rap music. While it’s true that the internet and the
digitization of music consumption as well as production has lead to a renaissance of
sampling-based production, the majority of that production has occurred within fan or DJ
communities, not rap music proper. Thus even popular albums that are highly sampled,
for example Danger Mouse’s Gray Album, represent a resurgence of DJ culture rather
than a contradiction of my claim about rap music. Furthermore, the increase in sampling
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logic, to borrow from Rose, is literate rather than oral in that it is unconcerned with
temporal continuity.
Rapping and Space
Instead of temporal continuity, rapping emphasizes discontinuity in time and
continuity in space. As noted before, breaking, graffiti, and early-DJing maintain intergroup cohesion in part through an identification based on mutual dependency across age
groups—a kind of continuity in space. We could potentially call this the “axis of
identification.” The flip side of this is what we would then call the “axis of diversity”
(Carey "Harold Adams Innis and Marshall McLuhan" 31-33)—the axis along which a
culture marks difference, or generates conflict. Just as we would expect the axis of
identification to reverse with oral and written cultures, so would the axis of diversity shift
“from a spatial or structural dimension to a temporal or generational dimension” (Carey
"Harold Adams Innis and Marshall McLuhan" 31). What this means is that in
predominantly spatially biased cultures, where space has been conquered or erased,
diversity comes along the axis of time—a factor of age or generation. The opposite is
then true in a temporally biased culture; with the erasure of time, diversity comes along
the axis of space.
Within rapping, the axis of diversity is best understood through inter-generational
conflicts such as those of C. Dolores Tucker and the right-steamrolling-Reverend Calvin
Butts. Both figures, older members of the African-American community, went on
sustained crusades against rap music. If we take the problematic assumption that hip-hop
is black, an assumption I will return to in Chapter 6, then the axis of diversity in this
has been met with an increasingly vociferous disapproval and high rate of prosecution for
copyright infringement meant to discourage the practice. Such sample-based practices
are, sadly, part of an oral tradition that, as I’ll discuss shortly, is placed in opposition to
the literate tradition—of which rap music is part and parcel—that currently dominates.
148
18
conflict is generational. The difference in roles Rev. Butts took for graffiti related and
rap related controversies is informative. When Michael Stewart, a young black man, was
brutally beaten and killed by police after they arrested him for writing graffiti in a
subway station in fall of 1983, Rev. Butts helped lead a crusade against the white cops
responsible. In this case, Butts allied himself trans-generationally within his own
community and against an outside community. In the case of rap music, however, Butts’
decision to literally steam-roll rap albums can be read as cross-generational conflict.
Tucker’s opposition to rap is even more clearly infused with generational discord.
In her crusade against rap music, “Tucker was also mouthing the most extreme fears of
many disillusioned, middle-class, middle-aged people of color, the very same civil rights
generation elders who felt they had given everything in struggle for their kids, only to see
them turn out to be spoiled, anarchic, value-free ingrates” (Chang 452). Tucker placed
herself in conflict with youth of color, while allying herself with white neo-cons across
racial lines, both indicative of a spatial rather than temporal bias. Not only does this
connect back to the often cited and generalized discord between the civil rights
generation and the hip-hop generation mentioned at the beginning of this chapter, but to
specific conflicts between the new youth culture of hip-hop and the established culture of
their elders. In this sense, rap music became the symbolic ground on which to fight the
“moral decline” of youth as seen through the eyes of an older generation with “more
conservative notions of propriety and civility” (Forman "Forman Comments on Your Hh
Chapters").
This generational conflict also held true in more institutional instances as well. S.
Craig Watkins points to “generational tensions” as a leading cause of why rap music was
denied access to the black music establishment, already centered around R&B. He
18
It’s also possible to read this as a conflict based on class, but I think the crux of this
conflict is generational.
149
writes, “R&B represented tradition, stability, and business as usual while rap, the new
cultural expression on the block, represented innovation, change and business as unusual.
In their resistance to rap that R&B vanguard moved to stem the onrushing tide of
generational change” (Watkins Hip-Hop Matters 79). The qualities of hip-hop that,
according to Watkins, are responsible for some of this tension, are the very same qualities
Innis attributed to spatial bias of literate and written cultures. This spatially biased focus
on innovation and change placed early rap in conflict with the values of generational
continuity held by the more temporally biased aspects of hip-hop culture.
Even the designation of a hip-hop culture articulated through rap as “youth
culture,” denotes a generational specificity that must be defined via exclusion. In being
youth culture, hip-hop is not adult culture, interpolating it into generational conflict from
the start. One of the qualities that Hebdige noted in his early work on the British punk
youth subculture, was the way that it appealed across racial lines. Punks, for example,
were more likely to listen to black-Jamaican reggae when not listening to punk (Hebdige
28-29, 63-64), than they were to white British rock music. Similarly, as rap music grew
in popularity, it began attracting an increasingly large segment of the white suburban
youth market who wanted “to give tangible form to their alienation” (Hebdige 63;
19
Kitwana Why White Kids Love Hip-Hop 23-24).
The cross identification of white
youth with inner city youth of color quickly put rap into the crosshairs of white middleaged music crusaders like Tipper Gore and her Parents Music Resource Center. Again,
while rap’s axis of identification connected youth across spatial barriers, its axis of
diversity brought it into conflicts with older age groups who themselves became allies
across those same barriers transgressed by youth.
19
Though this serves its purpose here, I will interrogate this cross-racial identification
further in Chapter 6.
150
That being said, there are some limitations to this parallel. In addition to
geographic differences, Carey also sees race, ethnicity, and class as part of these
structural elements that get erased by a culture with Innis’s spatial bias. While there are
some instances where racial boundaries get crossed, especially within the consumption of
rap music, they certainly aren’t erased. As I argue in Chapter 6, another force
contributing to the rearticulation of hip-hop as rap music culture is predicated on these
very racial differences. Further, there are far too many examples of rap music’s
homophobia and misogyny to claim that it erases these differences, not to mention the
way that gangsta rap in particular highlights class differences by placing itself as both
antithetical to middle-class values and strongly materialistic and wealth focused. Though
20
this points to a shortcoming of applying Carey’s reading of Innis, it does not jettison the
useful parallels already outlined. What’s more, there are ways of examining rap’s spatial
bias without relying on its articulation to youth culture.
Rapping and Empire
Another way to understand rap’s emphasis on temporal discontinuity is through
the manifestation of spatial continuity that both Carey and Innis refer to as “empire.”
Within rapping, the concern for “empire” manifests most clearly in two principles: its
individualistic competitiveness, and its commodified market drive. In the first instance,
scholars of rap have often linked it to earlier forms of braggadocio and one-upmanship
within African-American culture, for example “the Dozens,” and “Signifying,” which
were generally based on aggrandizing one’s self while diminishing others. Even as early
20
Winthrop-Young has also suggested that Carey’s reading of Innis may be inaccurate in
the way it places the conflict of time and space-biased media as central to social
organization (Winthrop-Young "German and Canadian Media Theory"). Further, it’s
clear from the way that Carey writes about a time and space bias, that he believes the
dominance of a spatially biased culture is inevitable. The conflict between the two is not
neutral—in and of itself unsurprising given that all of the technodeterminist theorists
discussed thus far have clearly stated or demonstrated a preference for one or another
culture—however Carey’s description of it implies a value that does not appear to be as
present in Innis’s own writing on the subject.
151
rap music borrowed much from these traditions, it also refined them. Rap’s braggadocio
became simultaneously more sophisticated and more aggressive, with violence, both
physical and verbal often adding a more insidious inflection. The deaths of rappers
21
Tupac and Biggie in their much hyped East/West feud can thus been read as roughly
analogous to the struggle for empire evident in most of European history, though this is
an obvious oversimplification of both and a reduction in disparate scale.
In the second instance, rap has become centrally tied in to an ethos of
commodification, commercialization, and the drive for market dominance. This is not
meant as a critique, the usual hip-hop head lament that the culture has “sold-out,” but
rather an identification of the way that hip-hop’s commercialization has taken shape. The
22
business of rap music is marked by its cut-throat drive for market dominance.
This
drive in turn manifests as conspicuous consumption of material goods, and the flaunting
of wealth. Similarly, scholar Eric Watts’ offers “spectacular consumption”—“a process
through which the lifeworld of the artist, the meaning of representation, and the
operations of the culture industry get transformed based upon terms generated by public
consumption of the art” (Watts 594)—as a way to understand the complex influence of
market pressures on the representation and production of rap. In other words, the
pressure for rap to consume internally is partly a product of the consumption of rap
externally, both of which are in-turn functions of the generalized consumer and
21
Though perhaps a more accurate comparison would be to frame it as a feud between
Biggie’s east coast Bad Boy record label, run by Sean “Puff Daddy” Combs, and Tupac’s
west coast Death Row label, run by Suge Knight.
22
A good example is the recent rivalry between Kanye West and 50 cent. Despite West’s
dubious claim that it was “friendly,” the so-called “beef” between the two rappers was
clearly centered on economic concerns. While releasing their albums simultaneously, the
two agreed that whoever outsold the other would be allowed to continue rapping while
the other would have to retire.
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accumulation culture of a capitalist society: “an expanding rap industrial complex”
(Watts 594).
23
It’s also possible to read a third example of rap’s concern for empire—and one
directly relevant to this project’s focus on the shift in hip-hop’s articulation—in the
treatment of breaking, graffiti, and DJing within rap music culture. In the work of Innis,
as well as McLuhan, there was a clear sense that oral and written traditions had a basic
antipathy or incompatibility with each other; or as Carey put it, the hostility that seemed
inevitably to develop between the written and the oral tradition” (Carey "Harold Adams
Innis and Marshall McLuhan" 12). Though this “hostility” may be mutual, there are
distinct differences in the way this incompatibility manifests. Just as the competitiveness
within breaking, graffiti, and early DJing remained largely collegial compared to the
individualistic competitiveness of rapping, so too did the inter-elemental competition.
Meaning that while breaking, graffiti, and early DJing often competed for attention and
24
resources, the borders between the cultures remained permeable. The hiphopsploitation films, Style Wars being a particularly good example, contain ample
evidence that many of the early practitioners of graffiti were also breakers, or that many
DJs also wrote graffiti. Afrika Bambaataa, for example, started out writing graffiti, and
soon transitioned into DJing. Similarly, Doze1, an original member of the Rock Steady
crew, was also a graffiti writer, and it is his paintings for which he is still most famous.
In short, graffiti, breaking, and DJing maintained a porous autonomy characterized by
both competition and cooperation.
23
While this process of commodification is key to understanding the difference between
hip-hop articulated to breaking, graffiti, and early DJing as a set of practices, and hip-hop
articulated to rap as musical culture, I will withhold a more sustained and detailed
analysis until the next chapter.
24
This competitiveness was of course made all the more acute as rapping gained an
increasingly large share of the attention.
153
Rapping, contrastingly, was not only internally individualistic in its
competitiveness, but externally so as well. Rather than excluding the other elements,
however, rapping colonized them: the third quality of rapping we could link to empire.
Such a colonization of orality is a fundamental component of literate and written culture.
As Carey continues explaining:
The innovation of writing would first lead to a recording of the oral tradition. It
would thus freeze it and make it of interest to subsequent generations largely for
antiquarian reasons. The written tradition, after its initial contact with the oral,
would go its own way. It would favor change and innovation and progressive
attenuation from the past as a residue of knowledge, values, and sentiments.
(Carey "Harold Adams Innis and Marshall McLuhan" 12)
In other words, when faced with an oral tradition, a literate or written tradition would
contain and then consume it. This containment and consumption is evident in the way
rapping has incorporated breaking, graffiti, and early DJing. The incorporation of DJing
into rap music is obvious, and the relationship between the two has already been
discussed above. However the incorporation of the other two elements is also
exemplified in the way that breakers were often featured as background dancers within
early rap videos, and graffiti influenced the style of most early rap albums.
This “freezing” of breaking, graffiti, and early DJing described by Carey
25
resembles the process of subcultural incorporation theorized by Hebdige.
As already
discussed in Chapter 3 in terms of Beat Street, the effect of this freezing on a subculture
25
This is not to ignore the critiques of Hebdige’s “incorporation” and “resistance,” but
simply to note that the mechanics of this model usefully describe the process through
which a cultural form is “frozen,” commodifiend, and “incorporated.” For critiques of
Hebdige, see Muggleton and Weinzierl, "What Is 'Post-Subcultural Studies' Anyway?.",
David Muggleton, "The Post-Subculturalist," The Clubcultures Reader: Readings in
Popular Cultural Studies, eds. Steve Redhead, Derek Wynne and Justin O'Conner
(Oxford: Blackwell, 1998), Steve Redhead, Subculture to Clubcultures: An Introduction
to Popular Cultural Studies (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 1997). Many of the critiques of
this particular theory of incorporation-resistance focus on problematizing the notion that
there is ever a moment with an “authentic” subcultural form that can be resistant or
incorporated. Since I’m here discussing only the incorporation of a subculture, and
making no claim that there is an “authentic” subculture to begin with, I avoid the majority
of those aspects of Hebdige that seem most often critiqued.
154
is twofold: first, it establishes a specific definition for the subculture, and then it sells that
definition. While Beat Street certainly does this as an individual text, the hiphopsploitation film cycle as a whole is also implicated. We can read the film cycle, with
its focus on graffiti, breaking, and DJing, as an attempt by the literate culture of rapping
to freeze and contain these oral cultures. In some ways, this also offers an answer to one
of the research questions underlying this project: why have these hip-hopsploitation been
largely forgotten or pushed aside? Or put even more pointedly, why are these films not
considered part of hip-hop culture?
26
As Carey explains, the purpose of such a freezing
is to contain and consume the “outdated” oral culture so that the written one can “go its
own way,” in the process marking a clear departure from and rejection of the oral culture.
This has the consequent result of also obscuring the earlier form and its legitimacy.
Conclusion
In theorizing hip-hop as media and mapping the technological deterministic
concepts of oral/tribal and written/literate society onto the competing articulations of hiphop identified in Chapters 2 and 3, I’ve attempted to do two things. First, I’ve tried to
explain the reason for the competition of these two articulations. Second, I’ve also tried
to explain some of the factors that contributed to the shift from an articulation centered
on a set of cultural practices to an articulation of hip-hop as a rap music culture. Before
continuing to explore some more of these factors in the next chapter, I want to once again
stress the way the hip-hopsploitation films help effect this shift. As stated above, the hip26
As discussed further in the introduction and Chapter 2, these films have tended to be
largely ignored by scholars of hip-hop and hip-hop in film, leading me to believe that
they are often not considered part of hip-hop culture. Even in the past eight to ten years,
as there’s been a resurgence of hip-hopsploitation-like films, only a handful of the
original hip-hopsploitation seem to get recognized as part of hip-hop culture: Wild Style,
Style Wars, Beat Street, and sometimes Krush Groove. This seems to be largely true
within both mainstream and more hip-hop-identified cultures, though with some
differences. During the 80s, it seems that the films were more embraced by those outside
of hip-hop and les so by those in, while now this general trend seems to have flipped,
with some fans of hip-hop indentifying many of the hip-hopsploitation films as part of
their cultural history—albeit through a lens partially clouded by nostalgia.
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hopsploitation films worked to contain the articulation of hip-hop as a set of cultural
practices by freezing and consuming representations of breaking, graffiti, and early party
DJing.
More importantly, however, the hip-hopsploitation films also did some of the
work of disarticulating breaking, graffiti, and party-DJing from hip-hop, and establishing
rapping as the primary and viable articulation. The inevitable conflict between
written/literate and oral/tribal traditions thus helps explain the process of (re)articulation,
as described by Slack, whereby the linkages that once connected several concepts is
erased and replaced with new linkages. As Carey writes:
The hostility between these traditions and between time binding and space
binding media generally led to the creation of a monopoly of knowledge. He used
the term monopoly in a straightforward economic sense. Very simply, Innis
contended that the culture of the favored institution would infiltrate ever aspect of
social life and ultimately drive out, define as illegitimate, or radically transform
competing traditions. (Carey "Harold Adams Innis and Marshall McLuhan" 12)
What Carey is describing is essentially the mechanism through which hip-hop was
rearticulated as rap music, and the consequent and all-but erasure from hip-hop’s popular
historical record of any earlier and competing articulation of hip-hop with a set of cultural
practices. In other words, as hip-hop becomes articulated to rapping as musical culture,
there’s a clear retroactive erasure of the origins of hip-hop within graffiti, breaking, and
party DJ cultures.
Thus, while many people within hip-hop culture—for example Afrika
Bambaataa—may retain knowledge of hip-hop as the product of four equally constitutive
elements, scholars and lay historians of hip-hop talk about it in ways that place rapping as
central and definitive. As a result, a whole constellation of connected ideas—for
example the historic trajectory of hip-hop as a product of toasting and “The Dozens”—
become interpolated along with rapping and hip-hop. This simultaneously erases the
importance of elements like graffiti and breaking, as well as the even more central role of
early DJ culture, and thus also reworks the importance of the groups and individuals
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involved in hip-hop history. In this way, the articulation of rapping and hip-hop as a
musical culture establishes itself as the only legitimate understanding of hip-hop by
controlling the historical record. Or, as Judith Butler puts it:
The fabrication of those origins tends to describe a state of affairs before the law
that follows a necessary and unlinear narrative that culminates in, and thereby
justifies, the constitution of the law. The story of origins is thus a strategic tactic
within a narrative that, by telling a single, authoritative account about an
irrecoverable past, makes the constitution of the law appear as a historical
inevitability. (Butler 46)
Hip-hop has become always already linked to rapping such that hip-hop history reads as
the inevitable—and therefore neutrally ideological—dominance and superiority of
rapping within hip-hop culture. While I wait until Chapter 6 to address the ideological
significance of this rearticulation, the next chapter will continue this more materially
based examination of hip-hop; as I demonstrate in Chapter 5, hip-hop’s rearticulation to
rap music culture was also facilitated by medial qualities of the four elements that made
rapping more accessible to commodification and thus dissemination.
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CHAPTER 5:
AUDIO KILLED THE VIDEO STAR
Introduction
In this chapter I extend the theorization of the four elements of hip-hop outlined
previously to analyze one of the important structural forces that aided in the rearticulation
of hip-hop in the mid-80s: the greater accessibility of consumer home audio compared to
home video. As hip-hop made its way into mainstream American culture, economic
forces worked to commodify it in an easily accessible way since, generally speaking, the
bigger the market a product has, the greater its potential profitability. The particular
medial qualities of the four elements described in the previous chapter made some of
them more accessible to easy commodification, and thus dissemination, than others.
Specifically, breaking, graffiti, and party-DJing were less suitable for commodification
than MCing in the form of rapping. Using so-called techno-deterministic theories,
namely McLuhan’s hot vs. cool concept and the work of German media theorist Friedrich
Kittler, this chapter begins by examining the effect the medial qualities of each element
had on the degree to which it was commodified
However it was not only the medial qualities of the individual elements that
affected the level of their commodification, but the state and political economy of the
media technology industry as well. As primarily visual/tactile media, graffiti, breaking,
and party-DJing required a visual/tactile form of commodification. In contrast, as a
primarily auditory medium, MCing in the form of rapping required an audio form of
commodification. Given the state of consumer technology in the mid-80s, consumer
audio, which had a long history and market saturation, was more accessible than
consumer video. The second part of this chapter is thus dedicated to a comparative
analysis of the home video and home audio technology markets in the 1980s as they
affected how hip-hop was commodified and, ultimately, articulated. In short, this chapter
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argues that there were basic structural, material, and medial forces working to rearticulate
hip-hop as rap music culture rather than as a set of cultural practices cohering around
breaking, graffiti, and party-DJing.
Commodifying Culture
Towards the end of the preceding chapter, I addressed how rapping and empire
function through an ethos of commodification, conspicuous consumption, and the drive
for market dominance. There the emphasis was on the way that, as a written/literate, and
thus spatially biased medium and culture, rapping is highly individualistic and
commercially oriented. In other words, the focus was on an Innisian analysis of the
social structures and relations made possible and emphasized by a cultural medium like
rapping. Here, I want to shift the focus away from how a written/literate tradition more
easily embraces—or is even conducive to producing—capitalism and capitalistic social
relations. Instead, I want to look at the way those same qualities of rapping made it more
commodifiable as a medium within a capitalist system, and simultaneously, the qualities
of breaking, graffiti, and party-DJing that made them less easily commodified and more
resistant to capitalist appropriation.
Again, I want to stress that this is not meant as the typical hip-hop head complaint
that hip-hop has “sold-out.” Nor is it a claim that rapping is a less “authentic” form of
hip-hop culture than breaking, graffiti, or party-DJing (and Turntablism) because of the
different degree to which these elements have been commercialized. As Forman notes in
the introduction to his hip-hop studies reader, “hip-hop was already part of an
entertainment and leisure economy and was, thus, a commercially oriented phenomenon
almost from the start” (Forman, "Part I" in Forman and Neal 11). Hip-hop was alwaysalready intertwined with commercialization in more direct ways as well. As noted
before, many scholars of hip-hop history have connected the emergence of hip-hop to the
dwindling economic opportunities of post-industrial urban New York (Chang; Forman
The 'Hood Comes First : Race, Space, and Place in Rap and Hip-Hop; Neal; Rose;
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Watkins Representing; Watkins Hip-Hop Matters). These scholars see hip-hop as an
alternative form of expression and means of deriving self worth when society’s
traditional avenues for deriving meaning, e.g. through the sale of ones own labor, are
unavailable or denied a particular group.
What’s more, hip-hop was connected to commercialism via the simple and everpresent desire of its practitioners to “make money.” Though the point is often glossed in
histories of hip-hop, early DJs held their parties in order to make money. Kool Herc, the
“Father of Hip-hop,” has stated that his famous house parties—often credited with
starting hip-hop—were held for financial gain. As Chang writes, Herc’s first party was
actually thrown by his sister, who wanted to raise money for her back-to-school clothes
shopping. She rented a space and asked Herc to DJ, setting him on the road to become,
in the words of NY native and hip-hop educator Matt Birkhold, “the man who was
getting money in the Bronx” (Birkhold). Birkhold goes on to note that hip-hop was
highly entrepreneurial from the start, creating new and desirable jobs in a blighted urban
economy. Not only did DJs raise money by charging admission to their parties, they also
spread that money to other members of the hip-hop community, paying graffiti writers to
design flyers, and the remnants of street gangs to work security. Hip-hop wasn’t just
popular as a form of entertainment culture or as a means of momentarily “forgetting” the
poor conditions of the Bronx, but as an alternative source of employment: the beginning
of a shadow economy in the urban wasteland of the 1970s and 80s Bronx.
This economic concern is similarly reflected in the hip-hopsploitation film Wild
Style. One of the driving forces for Raymond/Zorro and Z-Roc, two of the graffiti artists
depicted in the narrative, is their desire to “get paid.” Z-Rock’s primary rational for
convincing Raymond/Zorro to shed his anonymity and trademark reclusiveness in order
to do a newspaper interview, is because he believes it’ll get him money. Money also
pervades the relationship between Raymond/Zorro and his sometimes girlfriend
Rose/Lady Bug. Raymond/Zorro, who keeps his graffiti writing a secret, feels pressure
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from Rose/Lady Bug to get a job. Meanwhile Rose/Lady Bug leads the Union, a graffiti
crew that hires themselves out to do commercial murals, which Raymond/Zorro dislikes
because he feels their work is inauthentic. Even more emblematic, however, is the early
scene where Z-Rock takes Raymond/Zorro to meet Phade, a club manager played by the
famous Fab 5 Freddy. Not only does it frame Phade’s efforts to convince
Raymond/Zorro that he’ll “have money like Barry White” after doing the interview, but
the scene is set in a club with a paid MC/DJ crew competition. The winner, Busy-B
Starsky, ends up spelling out a large “B” with his winnings.
Commercialism vs. Commodification
It’s clear that commercialism, or at a minimum, an economic concern, was always
part of hip-hop culture. This is not, however, the same as saying that hip-hop has always
been commodified, and it is the distinction between commodification and
commercialization that is important here. Commercialization is the incorporation of
commerce or the exchange of money into a social or cultural system or institution.
Commodification, on the other hand, is the transformation or distillation of that social or
cultural system into a good that is then sold. Put another way, commercialization is the
incorporation of economic concerns into hip-hop culture while commodification is the
appropriation of hip-hop culture itself by economic interests. Whereas commercialism
was always already a part of hip-hop culture, commodification was not.
As I’ll argue shortly, MCing in the form of rapping was far more easily
commodified than the other three elements. This is important for studying the
articulation of hip-hop since U.S. culture and society are profoundly marked by
commodity capitalism, and in such a society and culture, commodification is a powerful
avenue for cultural dissemination. American society knows a culture like hip-hop by its
products and the face it’s given by its stars—i.e. those people and products that have
most successfully sold themselves to us. We know hip-hop by the way it is covered in
the media and shaped by the culture industry, especially for those people for whom hip-
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hop is not a part of their daily lived life. The fact that some aspects of hip-hop have
historically been more conducive to commodification is thus an important piece of
understanding how hip-hop went from being articulated as a set of cultural practices, to
being articulated as rap music culture.
Innis himself, being an economist by training, considered both commercialization
and commodification as it intersects with media and culture. For him, the shift from one
type of culture to another, from oral/tribal to written/literate, was largely the effect of
monopolies of knowledge, in other words, the economic control and dominance of certain
forms of media over others. Parallel to the conflict between oral/tribal and
written/literate cultures and media described at the end of the previous chapters, Innis
placed the tension between commercialism (in the form of mercantilism) and capitalism
(Innis "The Penetrative Powers of the Price System" 307). Capitalism, with it’s focus on
centralized power—empire—and a class rather than age based society, is clearly
connected to written/literate society and media, while commercialism, with it’s focus on
local and decentralized power, is more obviously connected to oral/tribal traditions and
media (Innis "The Penetrative Powers of the Price System" 307-8, 317).
As might be expected, then, the same incompatibility that characterized the set of
cultural forms and the set of economic forms, would extend between cultural and
economic forms, so that oral traditions/media would be less compatible with a capitalist
system. Or, as Carey wrote, “The strength of the oral tradition in Innis’s view was that it
could not be easily monopolized” (Carey Communication as Culture: Essays on Media
and Society 166). In other words, because orality is premised on a localized exchange—
most obvious in the case of communicative forms like speeches and conversations— it
resists the commodification and monopolization to which something like writing, which
is externalized and thus not necessarily local, is subject. When framed as such, oral
culture and media are those forms that are profoundly embodied, while written culture
and media are those that can be more easily externalized. An internalized object, by the
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very nature of being an object, is more easily commodified, while an embodied quality,
again by its very nature, is less easily commodified.
Hot and Cool
This issue of embodiedness is in part taken into account within McLuhan’s work
on media as well. Not only did he famously see all media as extensions of the human
body, but his theory of media and social change was premised on understanding the ratio
of sense perceptions a particular medium engender in its user’s body.
Oral/tribal culture
and media were those that maintained more of a balance between multiple senses, while
written/literate culture and media focused and extended only one sense. This provides
the foundation for McLuhan’s use of “hot” vs. “cool” media, where hot media are those
that extend only one sense with a high degree of intensity, and cool media are those that
extend multiple senses with a lower degree of intensity. Since cool media are lower in
information and intensity, they require more participation on the part of the user than hot
media.
The relationship between the senses used by a given medium as well as the degree
of participation, are important when applying hot and cool to understanding the hip-hop
elements and their designation as forms of media. Breaking, graffiti, and DJing require a
high degree of participation, are relatively low in information and intensity, and are more
focused on multiple sense perceptions. As a result, they are cool media. Rapping,
however, is less participatory and contains a more intense amount of information focused
in one sense. These qualities make rapping, especially when considered relationally to
breaking, graffiti, and DJing, a hot medium. Let us consider these designations in more
detail.
Breaking
Breaking, as a form of dance, combines visual and aural senses as the dancer’s
movements are synced to the sound of the music. Breaking is also highly tactile for those
dancing since they are in almost constant contact with the ground, and must literally feel
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the music as it merges with their bodies to produce a given combination. As a cool
medium, breaking is also highly participatory and experiential. Dance is by both nature
and practice a highly participatory cultural form, but leaving that aside, the social
structures within breaking in particular also demand participation from those that watch
rather than dance. As outlined in the previous chapter, the qualities that make breaking
an oral culture—for example the crew structure—also make it participatory. Battling in
particular is participatory for both the dancers engaged in battle and the audience that
determines the winners.
Graffiti
As with breaking, the qualities that made it oral, also make it a cool medium. At
first glance, graffiti seems to be a highly and almost exclusively visual medium, however,
like McLuhan’s TV, it is cool because it is also tactile. Graffiti is fundamentally about
painting in public and on public space. Were graffiti solely visual, it would not have
resisted the early attempts to commodify it via a move from trains to canvas as the
painting surface. The failure of canvas-based graffiti highlights that there is a dimension
of graffiti wrapped up in the specificity of experience. The very differentiation of graffiti
writer from toy, as explained in the previous chapter, is premised on experience. The
graffiti writer puts his time in at the yards and learns to paint on the trains. Without that
fundamental experience, a person is not a graffiti writer, and their art is not graffiti.
Similarly, the appreciation of graffiti is wrapped up in seeing it move through a
neighborhood on the side of a train, and the goal of most graffiti writers is to have their
pieces run “all-city.” These are not solely visual characteristics, but involve experience
at a fundamental level.
DJing
DJing, specifically the early form of DJing located within a hip-hop party setting,
also seems to be more one dimensional in its sense ratio. While highly aural, party-DJing
is also fundamentally experiential. As with graffiti, it is about the experience of sensing
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something within a particular context. In the case of DJing, it is about listening to the
music while at the party. To break it down further, we can look at DJing from both the
perspective of the DJ, as well as the people listening to them at the party. As Harry Allen
has stated, the goal of the DJ is first and foremost to rock the party and, in doing so,
prevent violence (Allen 8). This definition, while again tied to the aurality of the music
produced by the turntables, is also about being in a particular situation and being able to
manipulate that situation for a particular purpose. It is not only highly embodied as a
practice, but requires being able to sense the crowd and respond to their needs. This
same definition illustrates how DJing is a cool medium for those people
listening/partying. Rather than merely listen to the music passively, the audience must
participate by partying. This is the essential difference between a party and a concert; a
party has people interacting and enjoying themselves with the music as a unifying thread
or backdrop to the scene—even if at moments it is foregrounded—while a concert
generally requires that people remain a more passive audience listening to the music. By
being fundamentally tied to the party and its success, DJing remains lower in definition—
it contains less information focused in any one sense—and is thus cool.
Rapping (MCing)
Unlike the other three, MCing in the form of rapping is a hot medium. While
each of the other elements contains information conveyed across multiple sense
perceptions, rapping is a strictly aural medium. The information, both as music and
lyrics, is all packed into sound thereby producing a high intensity, high definition
medium. When part of party-DJing, or in the form of freestyling, MCing was more
aligned with the tactile, participatory party scene. However once MCing broke free and
became its own element in the form of rapping, it lost its connection to the participation
required of a more tactile medium like DJing. While concerts have remained a piece of
rap culture, such a combination of the visual, aural, and tactile senses are not integral to
rap culture as they are with breaking or DJing. Meaning, as already discussed in Chapter
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4, the dominant form of rap music consumption happens via (commodified) rap albums
outside of the concert setting. Further, it is possible to fully enjoy rap without ever
seeing it performed. Such a statement is not true of DJing, breaking, or graffiti.
Key Differences
Part of the power of a designation like hot and cool is that it is relational, and
sheds light on key differences in several media. What is important to understand about
the four elements of hip-hop is that, by relying on different ratios of sense perceptions
and degrees of participation, they require different process of commodification.
Meaning, translating these media into objectified and tangible commodities requires
capturing particular combinations of qualities. This is why technological capability plays
such an important role, and is in part, why such scholarship is labeled technological
determinism. In reference to the relationship between technology and the
commodification of media forms, McLuhan writes, “A cool medium like TV, when really
used, demands this involvement in process. The neat tight package is suited to hot media,
like radio and gramophone . . .. The passive consumer wants packages . . .” (McLuhan
Understanding Media 40). Cool media, because they are both highly participatory and
require multiple sense perceptions, are less suited to commodification, while hot media,
because they are high intensity and definition, are already tightly packaged and thus
suited for commodification.
In the case of breaking, graffiti, and party-DJing, the process of commodification
requires capturing aural, visual, and tactile qualities simultaneously. In contrast, rapping
only requires the ability to capture sound in high definition. McLuhan’s quote above is
instructive, since it points to the very technologies most suited to the commodification of
these elements. For cool media like DJing, graffiti, and breaking, a technology such as
television, or more accurately, home video, is necessary for commodifying the particular
ratio of sense perceptions and degree of participation. For a hot medium like rapping, a
focused technology like the phonograph/gramophone, or more generally, home audio, is
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necessary for commodifying its high degree of definition and intensity in only one sense.
Before turning completely to a comparative study of home audio and video technologies,
however, I will first explore further the process of capturing media forms like the four
elements of hip-hop through an application of Kittler’s media theory.
Audio/Visual Technology
Kittler’s theories of media depart from those of Innis and McLuhan by offering a
new configuration for analyzing media history. Rather than focus on the qualities of each
media in terms of the ratio of sense perceptions or degree of participation they allow, or
the particular social structures and institutions they make possible through controlling the
manipulation of time or space, Kittler focuses on the way media technologies process
information streams. While this means departing from the discussion of media as hot or
cool, the qualities attributed to each medium above are still important. These qualities
determine the shape of the information streams to be processed through selection,
1
storage, and (re)production. In other words, each element still has a particular
configuration of information streams, visual, tactile, aural, that must be factored into the
analysis of how that element will be processed as part of media technology.
Media, for Kittler, “are first and foremost cultural techniques that allow one to
select, store, and produce data and signals” (Krämer 93). What differentiates Kittler’s
understanding of media from Innis’ and McLuhan’s is the way that, according to Krämer,
media “are no longer directly linked to signs, to communication, or, for that matter, even
to information, but rather to data, in other words to the material ‘carriers’ of information.
The operations of media structure the terrain of data processing: they select, store, and
produce signals” (Krämer 97). Media not only vary in their ability to select, store, and
process data, but also in the register—namely the symbolic or real, but also the
1
Processing, for Kittler, is thus conceived of as some combination of the selection,
storage and/or (re)production of streams of information and data. Processing is what
happens to data or information when it is mediated by a technology.
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2
imaginary, concepts Kittler borrowed from Lacanian psychoanalysis —on which they
can carry out these processes.
In this sense we can plug media forms into a matrix comprised of these two
determining factors: 1) selection, storage, and production and 2) symbolic, real,
imaginary. Symbolic media like writing, typewriters, or the telegraph, can be compared
to real media (the technological) like the phonograph, cinema, or television both in terms
of the different ways that they store, produce, and select data (see Figure 2). While a
complete analysis fitting the hip-hop elements into the matrix would be interesting, for
the purposes of this chapter, I will limit the discussion to those qualities relevant to
discussing the commodification of hip-hop in the mid-1980s. Specifically, I will talk
about the processes of selection, storage, and (re)production only in terms of
commodification, and largely neglect the final horizontal category of digital, since the
computer—Kittler’s synonym for digital media—had not saturated the consumer market
sufficiently to be of concern for the time period in question, nor was it of particular
relevance to hip-hop culture a this time.
3
2
In importing Lacanian psychoanalysis Kittler refigures the narrative of media history.
Instead of the alphabet, printing press, and computer, Kittler sees the three “phases” of
media history qua social change as literacy (the alphabet, writing, and printing all
combined), technological media (gramophone, film, telephone, television), and digital
media (the computer and internet). While earlier media theorists stressed the printing
press and the move to mechanical reproduction as a significant turning point, Kittler saw
this as merely the continuation of a media defined by the symbolic. The printing press,
like all written language, is reliant on systems of signs and symbols that represent ideas,
data, and man’s reality. It is only with the emergence of analog recording technologies
like the gramophone that media can move beyond the symbolic to record reality.
3
It’s arguable that the digital sound sampler, an important tool of hip-hop production, is
enough like a computer to be considered one within the parameters of my argument,
however I will forego discussing it given the limitations of this dissertation.
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Figure 2: Kittlerian Matrix
Symbolic
Technological
Digital
Selection
Storage
(Re)Production
Processing Hip-Hop
Framing Kittler’s conception of media as data processing in terms of
commodification is not without its origins within Kittler’s own work. In both instances,
we are talking of processes—the way technologies mediated information. For Kittler, it
was the process of selecting, storing, and (re)producing data or information, while in this
project, I am referring to commodification as the process through which something is
made into a material commodity. Materiality, too, is an important point of connection
between Kittler’s understanding of media and such a concept of commodification. In
explaining Kittler’s definition of media, fellow German media scholar Cybil Krämer
writes:
the only techniques that can be considered data processing are those that use a
spatial means to create possibilities of ordering the things differently that are
etched into this spatial order . . .. Storing is not merely a means of preserving but
is also intrinsically connected to spatial order. Wherever something is stored, a
temporal process must be materialized as a spatial structure. Creating spatiality
becomes the primary operation by which the two remaining functions of data
processing—transporting and processing—become possible at all. (Krämer 99)
In essence, for Kittler, media are those technologies that allow us to convert information,
especially information tied to temporality, into a spatial form. By spatial, Krämer means
that we locate this information in a material and physical form—media are the “material
‘carriers’ of information” (Krämer 97). In other words, media are the technologies
through which we make information material, just as commodification is the process
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through which we convert the intangible or previously unsellable into a material salable
good.
Looking at hip-hop through this lens of data processing and commodification, we
can then begin to understand how each element lends itself to being materially selected,
stored, and (re)produced in distinct ways. This functions with the element as both
subject—how it processes data—and object–how it is processed as data. Thinking about
the elements of hip-hop as subjects returns us to the previous discussion of the elements
as media capable of working along the axes of time and/or space. Here breaking, graffiti,
and DJing work to select, store, and (re)produce the “data” of orality, while rapping
works to process the “data” of literacy. However in order to better understand hip-hop as
subject—as well as object—of data processing, it must be fit back within the tension
between symbolic and technological media.
Symbolic vs. Technological Hip-Hop
As briefly explained above, Kittler combines the triad of Lacanian
psychoanalysis—the symbolic, real, and imaginary—with a technological deterministic
approach to media history. In Gramophone, Film, Typewriter, Kittler expressly maps the
Lacanian triad on to the media technologies listed in the title. While the typewriter,
which only allows the user to select a predetermined set of symbols, embodies the
symbolic for Kittler, “Film was the first to store those mobile doubles that humans, unlike
other primates, were able to (mis)perceive as their own body. Thus, the imaginary has
the status of cinema [or visa versa]. And only the phonograph can record all the noise
produced by the larynx prior to any semiotic order and linguistic meaning” (Kittler 16),
leading Kittler to link it to the Lacanian real. Ultimately, this leads Kittler to categorize
4
media technologies as being either symbolic, technological, or digital.
4
It’s also interesting to note that in breaking media up into symbolic, technological, and
digital, especially in conjunction with his definition of media that requires a material
location for data processing, Kittler negates many practices, techniques, and or tools as
media. Most importantly, spoken word, when unrecorded, is excluded. As a result, the
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Most important for this discussion is the difference between the symbolic and
technological. Symbolic—or textual—media are those media capable of selecting,
storing, and (re)producing information only via a symbolic register, while technological
media are capable of selecting, storing, and (re)producing “reality” with more fidelity.
As Krämer puts it, “Textual media transform the linguistic-symbolic into an operable
code; technological media, by contrast, transform the contingency-based, material real
itself into a code that can be manipulated” (Krämer 100). Since these different categories
have different capabilities for data processing, there will be a consequent favoring of
certain facets of information within a given medium. This holds true for the elements of
hip-hop, both as processors of information themselves and when processed as
information.
Data Processing
When framed as media or technologies, breaking, graffiti, and party-DJing are
largely extra-symbolic. While it’s true that there is a syntax within breaking, graffiti, and
DJing, the power of that syntax as a part of each element is limited in its ability to
process—specifically select, store, or (re)produce—data. For example, in breaking
individual moves have names and breakers their signature moves; combinations become
well known to the point of canonization, and in short, a common vocabulary develops
within the sub-culture surrounding the practice. That being said, this language is not
integral to the functioning of breaking as a kind of technique or technology for processing
data. Put another way, the language of breaking is a descriptive aspect of breaking’s
orality described earlier in this project, as well as in Innis, McLuhan, Ong, and Carey, no
longer fits under the category of media. While this is not the place to debate these
aspects of Kittler’s media theory, there is certainly an argument to be made regarding the
classification of embodied practices as media technologies. In such a refigured media
classification, oral practices would be considered media since they locate information
within the materiality of human bodies and/or their embodied social relations and
systems.
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internal logic, not a part of its capability to function as a technology for data processing
proper.
Similarly, the symbolic aspects of graffiti and DJing function as subcultural
languages within the practices rather then as part of the data processing itself. At first
glance, graffiti would seem to eschew this categorization since it quite obviously utilizes
symbols in the form of painted words. However, as I’ve argued before, it is less about
the semiotics or the meaning of the symbols as part of a symbolic system, than it is about
the act of getting them painted, where they’re painted, how widely they get distributed,
and how long they remain up. The primary symbols used within graffiti are “tags,” the
names individuals or crews use when writing, and while they serve as function similar to
a signature, the significance of the actual name itself is often limited to its user and a
select group of friends and fellow graffiti writers. Graffiti writers often go to great
lengths to “camouflage” the names or embed them within the larger piece in such a way
as to be close to illegible to anyone but a graffiti insider. As a result, the symbols present
within graffiti are less textually symbolic than pictorially so.
As with every other category covered in the project thus far, rapping is distinct
from the other elements in that it is more obviously symbolic in nature. MCing in the
form of rapping is quite literally language. While the other elements each have a syntax
or a kind of sub-cultural language, rapping uses language as the primary mode for
processing the data: it is syntax. While graffiti uses paint on the side of trains, breaking
utilizes movements of the body, and DJing relies on combinations of prerecorded sound,
rapping is centered around linguistic sound—the vocalized lyrics. While there are
certainly important extra-lyrical elements of rapping, for example the cadence, the
personality or reputation of the rapper, and most notably the music over which the lyrics
are performed, the core remains the lyrical content of the music. Were these components
of rap isolated, only the lyrics would retain their resemblance to rapping, making them
the defining quality of rapping.
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Processed Data
Just as a hot medium like rapping is better suited to a hot technology like the
phonograph and a cool medium like breaking better suited to a cool technology like
TV/video, symbolic and technological media are each better suited to their corresponding
technologies. The differences apparent in how the four elements process data become
significant once we shift to viewing hip-hop in terms of how it is processed as data
through the symbolic and/or technological media. In other words, because rapping relies
on the symbolic to process data, it is by its very nature, more easily selected, stored, and
(re)produced within symbolic media technologies than information not already anchored
to the symbolic. As Krämer puts it, “In the era of writing, one could only write things
down that already existed as elements in the symbolic universe – or in other words, the
things that are inherent to the ‘nature’ of a sign…” (Krämer 94). Since rapping is
centered on its lyrical content, it already exists within this symbolic universe. Despite
some loss of important information, symbolic media can thus adequately process rapping.
The same is not true of breaking, graffiti, and early DJing. Since they do not
already exist within the realm of the symbolic, breaking, graffiti, and early DJing resist
being processed through symbolic or textual media. The core aspects of these hip-hop
elements are “extra-symbolic—or that which is beyond the symbolic realm” (Krämer
94)—and thus require media technologies capable of processing data at an expanded
bandwidth. As Krämer goes on to writes, “Technological media allow one to select,
store, and produce precisely the things that could not squeeze through the bottleneck of
syntactical regimentation in that they are unique, contingent, and chaotic.” (Krämer 94).
In other words, only technological media are “sensitive” enough to pick up and process
the extra-symbolic aspects of breaking, graffiti, and DJing. These three elements, as
previously described, include data across a variety of types, most notably the experiential
or participatory. Experience and participation can be described symbolically, but not
selected, stored, and/or (re)produced. In short, while symbolic media are capable of
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representing aspects of breaking, graffiti, and DJing, they cannot capture them in the way
that technological media can.
Capabilities for Data Processing: The 1980s Context
In a vacuum, these differences would be interesting—and perhaps important for
understanding these elements abstractly—but when placed within the historical context of
the 1980s, these differences become more significant. The disparity in how well an
element can be processed through symbolic or technological media are significant only
when there is a corresponding difference in the accessibility to or capability of
technologies in these categories. While rapping is tied to the symbolic, technological
media would still process it more completely, picking up many of the extra-symbolic
components like cadence, tone of voice, and the underlying musical track. Technological
media, then, would process all four of the hip-hop elements more completely than
symbolic media by picking up those aspects that would otherwise fall through the “grid
of the symbolic,” to use Kittler’s words (11). Yet, as I will demonstrate shortly,
technological media capable of processing graffiti, breaking, and pary-DJing were not as
widespread and accessible in the 1980s as were technological media capable of
processing rapping. The bottleneck of data processing not only exists at the level of the
symbolic, but at the level of technological capabilities as well. In the case of hip-hop, the
resulting imbalance helped bring about the conditions of possibility necessary for a shift
from hip-hop articulated to breaking, graffiti, and early-DJing as a set of cultural
practices, to hip-hop articulated to rapping as a musical culture. Put more generally,
there were economic and medium-specific reasons for why hip-hop became articulated to
rap music rather than breaking, graffiti, and DJing.
Hip-hopsploitation
In many ways, the failure of the hip-hopsploitation films can be linked back to
this difference between the technological capabilities for processing the early articulation
of hip-hop as a set of cultural practices, and the later articulation of hip-hop as rap music
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culture. First, the hip-hopsploitation films could not select, store, and (re)produce
breaking, graffiti, and party-DJing with sufficient validity. Too many aspects of each
failed to be either selected, stored, or (re)produced. Thus the set of practices around
which this early articulation of hip-hop cohered were depicted within the hiphopsploitation film in a way that rang false with potential consumers, not necessarily out
of any knowledge of hip-hop culture per se as much as the obvious failure to represent
the vitality at the heart of the elements—it doesn’t always take specific expertise to
recognize a one or two-dimensional representation of a cultural product. The capabilities
of data processing made possible by available technologies distributed this failure
unevenly across the elements. As a result, aspects of breaking, graffiti, and DJing were
processed with less validity than rapping. Not only was rapping more suited to
processing through symbolic media than the other elements, but superior technological
media had also been developed for audio that could process it more completely. For the
hip-hopsploitation films, which belong to the category of technological media according
to Kittler, the more important piece is that film was still not “sensitive” enough to process
important streams of data within breaking, graffiti, and DJing.
Second, the technologies available also determined the effectiveness of how each
element would be commodified as media. This is nowhere more evident than in the rise
in popularity of the film soundtrack. This is especially true within the hip-hopsploitation
genre, where the soundtracks from the films often outshone and in some ways even
outlasted the popularity of the films themselves. More generally, what sets the film and
the film soundtrack apart is that, until the invention of home video, the latter was
available for purchase and home consumption. Even leaving aside the inferiority of
attempts to process breaking, graffiti, and party-DJing, there was an imbalance in the
technological capacity to package and sell a commodified form of each element. Graffiti,
breaking, and party-DJing become audio-visual media via their depiction within the hiphopsploitation films, and assuming that they were still in demand in this flattened form,
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the technology was not sufficiently available in homes to supply the demand. As I will
show in the next sections, this was partly the result of the political economy of media
technologies. Specifically, the structure and dynamic of the home audio and video
markets, and the disparity in the home penetration rate and average price of these two
technology groups made rap music, as audio, more accessible than the visual forms of
breaking, graffiti, or DJing, thereby working to shift how hip-hop was articulated in the
1980s. For a historical background of the primary technologies discussed, please refer to
Appendix C on page 290.
Comparative Analysis of Home Audio and Video
Hardware: Technology
On a technological level, the particular dynamic of the home audio and video
hardware industry contributed to creating the conditions of possibility for hip-hop to be
rearticulated from a set of cultural practices to rap music culture. The differences in the
technological requirements for the development of audio and video—mechanical vs.
electronic and even later analog vs. digital—was a principle factor that affected the
facility by which these technologies were adopted and innovated. These technological
and medium-specific differences thus contributed to the rearticulation of hip-hop as rap
music rather than a set of cultural practices cohering around breaking, graffiti, and DJing.
Technological Requirements: Mechanical vs. Electronic
One of the basic differences in home audio and home video technologies, is that
the former relied initially on mechanical technologies, while the latter relied on electronic
ones. This is most evident in a comparison of the record player (vinyl) and the VCR.
While there were several later electronic audio technologies, I focus on the record player
here for two reasons. First, it was still the dominant form of audio technology within the
household during the 1980s; even if the annual sales for vinyl were being quickly outpaced by those of audiotape and, later, CDs, vinyl had nearly a century to diffuse into
homes. Second, vinyl records and turntables were a crucial part of early hip-hop—and in
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5
particular, DJing, breaking, and MCing— and hip-hop’s commodification in a way
unique to this audio format. As a result, vinyl can easily serve as the exemplary home
audio technology for this project.
It is also true that record players quickly became electronic, both in terms of
requiring electricity to maintain a steady rpm for the turntable, as well as to amplify the
vibrations from the vinyl into clear and audible sounds. Nevertheless, the base
technology for the record player, the character of sound waves etched into the vinyl, is
fundamentally mechanical. Video, however, is clearly based upon an electronic
technology—electromagnetic signals recorded on magnetic tape. While there are
certainly moving mechanical parts in a VCR, the actual video technology is thoroughly
electronic. Whereas vinyl physically embeds the sound in the surface of the disc as
vibrations, video records an electromagnetic signal that approximates and represents its
visual and audio information—it is analogous to the physical signal, hence the term
“analog” to describe this type of electronic signal, though later video technologies would
be based on digital video signaling. The record player merely has to amplify these
vibrations, but the VCR must read, translate, and finally transmit this electronic signal
from tape to TV screen.
Autonomy
There are two important points to make about the different technological
requirements of home audio and home video outlined above in the form of their varying
degrees of autonomy and complexity. First, the mechanical technology of the record
player does not require much in the way of support technologies. Initially, it was a
5
Audiotapes, especially in the form of the hip-hop mix tape, were also important in the
later-80s and up through the 90s, however because they largely existed outside the
bounds of “official” or measurable commodity culture, they are not included in my
analysis here. This is not to ignore their importance, and it is certainly a potential
limitation of my argument, but the sale of mixtapes and use of blank audiotapes for home
dubbing cannot be accurately tracked and as a result, cannot be included.
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completely autonomous technology, with record players embedded in cabinets that
functioned as pieces of living room furniture. Even as the record player became
electrified, it was often autonomous. It was only after the invention of other home audio
technologies such as the radio and then the audiotape, that the record player lost some of
its autonomy (both fundamentally electronic, if analog, technologies).
Still, when a part of a larger component home stereo system, a record player only
requires some means of amplification—often via receiver and speakers—a relatively
simple process when compared to the requirements of a VCR. As an electronic
technology, the VCR operates using an electromagnetic signal that approximates what it
is recording and stores it in the form of an electronic wave. This approximation must
then be deciphered and transmitted before it can be consumed by an audience. More
specifically, a VCR requires TV as a technology before it can exist. The invention of the
VCR requires the prior development of television in the form of the televisual
transmission of images and sounds as electric signals. Furthermore, for an audience to
consumer these sounds and images, the VCR must be connected to a television. The
television must translate and transmit those electric signals into beams of light and waves
of sound on the TV screen.
Complexity
The relative autonomy of home video and home audio is connected to the relative
complexity of each technology. An autonomous technology is simpler than one
dependent on other hardware, and thus, more easily adopted. More importantly, though,
the difference in complexity influences the ease with which each is innovated. As a
relatively simple technology, the record player could be invented by individuals like
Edison, Bell, and Berliner. In addition, as the technology was developed further, the
competition between formats—which I cover in more detail in Appendix C—was able to
exist within the consumer marketplace on a much more intense scale. In other words,
format competition, such as that between the 45rpm record and the 33 1/3 rpm LP, was
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able to exist within the audio marketplace, driving price reductions and increasing
awareness through advertising, in a way not possible for video. The 45 and LP would
eventually coexist in the consumer audio market.
Coexistence was possible because the only significant shift needed was to change
the record player hardware itself to function as a dual speed machine. Even before that,
the transition from the 78rpm to the LP included the invention of an “adapter” that would
allow new LP records to be played on any turntable (Coleman 60). The simplicity of the
mechanical record player technology made innovation less likely to completely obsolesce
earlier forms of record players on the market. This is not true of the more complex home
video technologies which, being electronic, tend towards obsolescence. The VHS
Betamax war, for example, was an all or nothing, winner take all competition. Because
of the complexity required of video technology in general, these formats were mutually
exclusive. This was also true of the earlier attempts at making video viable as a
consumer technology. Rather that seeking to build off of already existing formats, early
producers of video directly competed in an attempt to be the first on the market. The
result was competition among formats not only struggling with rather small selections of
content, but also plagued by poor design and performance.
In short, the complexity, and interedependence, of video hindered its ability to
quickly and efficiently enter into the marketplace during the 1980s. Contrastingly, the
simplicity and autonomous nature of the record player—not to mention its nearly 100
year preeminence—all but guaranteed that it would be well entrenched in American
homes as hip-hop was emerging. As a result, audio was well positioned to be an outlet
for hip-hop’s commodification. The appropriation and commodification of hip-hop
required a medium that could reach as many households as possible. The record player
was better suited to doing this than the VCR, which still had too many obstacles to make
it easily accessible to everyone. As already stated, the effect of this complexity was
evident in the winner take all nature of home video technological competition.
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Inter-Technological Competition
The relative complexity and autonomy of audio and video technologies had a
secondary influence over the degree to which the technologies could saturate the market.
The inter-technological competition between formats within home audio and video,
altered how each, as an overarching category of consumer electronics, would diffuse into
American society by either hindering or facilitating the development of each technology.
In the case of the cylinder vs. disc audio-record, the VHS vs. Betamax, and VCR vs.
laser-disc competitions, the differences between each format were ultimately
insurmountable, leading to the kind of winner take all competition noted above. Since
“winning” a format war means the obsolescence of one format—though in the case of
cylinder vs. disc record, there was a prolonged period of coexistence before this
happened—there can be a retarding effect on the consumer adoption of these
technologies until a clear winner is named. Even when consumers don’t wait, they often
have to “start over” if they happened to place their bets on the losing format.
Nevertheless, these wars can also contribute to the lowering of prices and an acceleration
of feature development. Still, the overall effect would seem to be negative in terms of
quick market saturation.
The format war of 45 vs. LP vinyl records is unique in the way that they were
both based on similar, and simpler, audio technology that allowed them to eventually coexist. In their case, while one format eventually came out ahead, it was not a winner take
all situation. Whereas the owners of Betamax decks had to eventually choose whether to
buy VHS VCRs as Betamax disappeared, owners of 45s could easily buy a record player
that could play both 45s and LPs. The eventual dominance of LPs did not have nearly the
same negative impact on home audio consumers as the VHS vs. Betamax war had on
home video consumers; switching to LPs did not necessarily mean losing a collection of
45s as many record players were made to accommodate both formats. The complexity of
video formats did not allow a similar dual functionality. In broad strokes then, the
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differences in the inter-technological competition of audio and video technologies also
influenced the way each would saturate the home electronics market. While competing
audio technologies were more amenable to prolonged coexistence, competing video
technologies were not. Please refer to Appendix C for a more detailed look at this intertechnological competition, focusing on the cylinder vs. disc and 45 rpm vs. LP format
wars, and the VHS vs. Betamax war and the VCR vs. laser disc competition.
Comparative Analysis of Home Audio and Video Software:
Consumers
One of the primary reasons for the failure of video-disc and other early video
systems was that they were playback-only. Put simply, consumers desired a video
system that would give them control of their content as well as a wide selection of
previously recorded content. The issue of playback-only versus dual function (i.e.
playback and record capable) systems as well as other consumer-choice oriented issues
like content, price, accessibility, and market saturation/home diffusion, have been
important for consumers of home audio and video alike. In this sections, I will focus on
software and consumer-choice, offering a comparative analysis of how consumer
oriented qualities of each technology shaped the relative success of home audio and video
during the 80s, ultimately influencing how hip-hop was mediated and articulated for the
public. In other words, the consumer response to these technological differences affected
which representations of hip-hop were consumed by mainstream audiences and as a
result, helped rearticulate hip-hop as rap music culture.
Consumer Choice of Media Functionality: Playback, if only
The functionality of home audio and video helped determine their relative success
with 1980s consumers, crucially influencing the kind of mediated representation of
culture available at the time. This in turn was a product of the particular consumer
priorities that had developed by this point. These consumer priorities are themselves a
product of medial factors; the priority only exists after a choice, i.e. a technological
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capability, exists. In other words, the success of dual function video systems over
playback-only systems in the 1980s, as well as the failure of such dual function audio
systems almost 100 years prior, can be understood in relation to the effect of other media
on consumer priorities. In this case, the primary influence came from broadcast media:
radio and television. Without either, their respective home audio and video systems have
no need to be dual function. The opportunity and thus desire to time-shift audio or video
content is only possible if such content exists to be shifted. Time shifting content is then
almost entirely dependent on a source of, largely free, broadcast content.
6
Since audio broadcasting—radio—was not invented until after the introduction of
consumer home audio, there was not need for recording functionality. By the time
consumer home video hit the market, video broadcasting—TV—was an important part of
the home entertainment media market. As Wasser notes, “American viewers had been
watching television for two decades…. After two decades they were willing to spend
money in order to get beyond the mere passive viewing of whatever was on the set when
they turned it on. They wanted to be able to choose when to see the program, where to
see the program, and /or which program to see” (76). In other words, broadcast video
provided consumers with the choice of creating their own content, thus creating a
consumer priority for dual function home video systems where none had existed before.
The dominance of a playback only system like the Berliner disc-gramophone,
especially in relation to a dual function audio system like Edison’s cylinder phonograph,
was only possible at the turn of the 19th century because radio had not yet been invented.
By the time it was, playback-only systems within audio were already entrenched enough
6
That said, it can certainly be argued that time-shifting exists independently of broadcast
media in the sense that dubbing of prerecorded content exists, however the influence of
dubbing on consumer home audio or video is less important until after my time-period of
interest, since the technology required to achieve it was generally not affordable enough
for the average person. Dubbing was much more prevalent within commercial or
industry circles, though there is also a small influence it had via aiding in the circulation
of potentially embarrassing content like pornography, as will be briefly discussed shortly.
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to survive a potential shift in consumer priorities. The quick rise of audiotape in the
1980s further demonstrates this point. As the capability for a dual function system
became available in the form of the competing audiocassette tape format, vinyl became a
less desirable choice for the consumer. Though interestingly, this priority would soon
shift again as consumers began flocking towards the newer CD format—a sign that in the
1990s, consumers valued the random access and improved recording quality of CDs,
7
leading them to choose them over audio cassette tapes.
On the surface, it would seem that the consumer favorability of dual purpose
systems in the 1980s would favor video over audio, and by extension, undercut my
argument then the dominance of home audio in the 1980s helped make possible the
corresponding dominance of rapping. However, several key features of how this
consumer preference manifested make clear that it actually served to further highlight the
importance of rap music in the face of the set of hip-hop cultural practices depicted in the
hip-hopsploitation films. First, the rise of audiocassettes, while ultimately responsible for
the effective death of vinyl, helped stimulate the consumer home audio market in the 80s
in a way favorable to rap music. Second, the preference for record capabilities in home
video emphasized the use of video systems for time-shifting purposes rather than for the
viewing of prerecorded content. Thus, while the increased consumer choice for dual
functionality may on the surface seem to favor video over audio, it did not favor
commodified rap music over a corresponding commodified form of hip-hop as a set of
cultural practices, hip-hopsploitation.
The Rise of the Audiocassette
While the rise of the audiocassette as a product of increased consumer
prioritization of dual function audio systems would seem to work against the stability of
7
Not to mention the mild resurgence of vinyl also fueled in part by audiophiles and the
popularity of DJ oriented music (hip-hop, electronica, house, etc).
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home audio—and thus the stabilization of hip-hop as articulated through/to rap music—it
actually helped increase consumer exposure to home audio. As Coleman points out, as
the 1970s came to a close, “Records were in a rut [and h]ome taping offered an escape
from all those crappy LPs. By 1980, there was an actual physical glut of vinyl” (160). In
other words, the advent of the audiocassette tape caused two things. First, it increased
interest in and consumer purchase of new forms of consumer home audio. While this
could have lead to instability in the consumer home audio marketplace, it instead helped
expand it. Since record players were already in a vast majority of household,
audiocassettes both filled in the gaps, as well as offered a new outlet for consumers to
expand their libraries. The saturation of the vinyl market acted as a stabilizing force even
as market dominance shifted to audiotapes and later CDs. Consumers simply replaced
their vinyl libraries with cassette or CD copies of the same albums (Bordowitz 45). Not
only did this avoid the instability, it in fact ballooned the home audio revenue at exactly
the right time, making it seem disproportionately lucrative.
Second, the rise of audiocassettes caused an increasing in the availability of vinyl
records, as well as a corresponding decrease in the price (see the 1978-1980 cost of vinyl
in Figure 3). Meaning, vinyl became cheaper than it had been before, at a time when, for
hip-hop—which was crucially still generally a culture of people living in poverty—cost
may well have been a limiting factor. For vinyl, a key component of DJing, and by
extension MCing and breaking, to become cheaper also made it more accessible for
aspiring hip-hop artists and consumers alike. This is especially important given that the
introduction of hip-hop records occurred in 1979. Early hip-hop records were thus more
affordable to consumers than they otherwise should have been at that moment, potentially
allowing them to reach an unusually large audience.
Dual Functionality in Home Video
As with audio, the increased demand for dual functionality at first seems to favor
the consumption of video over audio, and by extension, favor the commodified visual
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representation of hip-hop over the commodified audio representation. Yet the effect was
just the opposite. Rather than help the representation of hip-hop as articulated to a set of
cultural practices, I helped increase the dominance of hip-hop as articulated to rap music.
This is because, even though video more generally met the consumers’ priority for dual
functionality than vinyl, the emphasis of video was more heavily tilted toward timeshifting:
The primary use of the VCR by innovators and early adopters was for timeshifting broadcast programming, not for viewing prerecorded fare (e.g., Levy,
1981 and Levy, 1983)…. As prerecorded videos became widely available by the
mid-1980s, however, the nonrecording function of the VCR did become a primary
reason for VCR adoption by later adopters (Kllopfenstein, 1988). (Klopfenstein
32)
This was a problem for the diffusion of hip-hop in the form of the hip-hopsploitation
films, which required prerecorded content playback that was at least as important as timeshifting. But even as the use of video shifted towards prerecorded content in the mid1980s, the particular political economy of the hip-hopsploitation film cycle prevented it
from becoming a significant piece of hip-hop culture.
The Quality of the Content
The prioritizing of time-shifting over playback of prerecorded content certainly
delayed the dominance of visual representations of hip-hop, but since the hiphopsploitation films did not fully take off until the mid-1980s, it does not fully explain
the failure of these films and by extension the visual representation of hip-hop. Rather, a
quick look at the political economy of the hip-hopsploitation films shows that they failed
in part because of the particular relationship they had to the emerging home video
market. First, as small budget and predominantly exploitation films, hip-hopsploitation
got caught in a blind spot between the rise of home video and the decline of theatrical
film attendance. Second, this oversight was exacerbated by the particular relationship of
exploitation content in home entertainment consumption.
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Theatrical Releases in a Home Video Economy
As covered more in the discussion of Breakin’ in Appendix A, the success of
Cannon and other independent studios, those studios most responsible for the production
of the hip-hopsploitation film cycle, was built on money from home video (Wasser 12223). Cannon pre-sold their films for the home video market, freeing up revenue for
production. This was an unstable business model, however:
The independents’ success built the video market. Now the explosive growth of
that market was paving the way for their ultimate doom. Video wholesalers
became a bottleneck. They felt their primary mission was to stock current big
hits, not to provide access to the widest range of choice. They favored films that
had received big theatrical releases, the huge conglomerates used the new video
money to finance big releases. Therefore, video rentals and sales served to
facilitate the studio trend toward a few big blockbusters. Despite their own
occasional hits, the smaller distributors could not keep up. They died off in the
late 1980s and early 1990s as home video stabilized. (Wasser 12)
The viability of home video as a commercial medium was responsible for the success of
studios like Cannon, potentially leading to the production of the hip-hopsploitation film
cycle in the first place. But this was the unstable product of a developing video market,
and as it collapsed, it only left room for the blockbuster; only highly successful and
lucrative film releases became viable as video.
The dynamics of the home video industry were such that a film like Breakin’
could no longer survive since it lacked both a big enough revenue/market and a wellfinanced (i.e. big) release. This is in part a function of the delay of consumer
prioritization of prerecorded content playback. The shift of consumers towards playback
of feature films at home caused a further blind spot in the movie market at just the time
that the hip-hopsploitation films were being released. As Klopfestein points out, “40% of
all films viewed in 1986 were already being seen at home on VCRs when VCR
penetration was also around 40%[…]. Teens and young adults (ages 20-29), the two most
frequent movie-going groups, [had also] decreased their theater attendance significantly
(Roth, 1986)” (Klopfenstein 31). The rise of VCR ownership and the shift towards
playback of prerecorded content cut into the theater attendance, especially for the exact
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group most likely to view the hip-hopsploitation films: teens and youth. This in turn
decreased the success of the hip-hopsploitation films, causing them to earn less revenue.
At the same time, studios retained some ambivalence about releasing their content
on video amidst continued worry about copyright compliance and profit. The relative
bulk of audience money and demand was shifting away from theatrical releases and
towards home video, but producers had not yet factored this into their methods for
calculating success. Even as theatrical attendance stayed relatively stable overall, the
revenue flow of home video was continually increasing to the point that it exceeded
theatrical revenues by 1987-1988 (Wasser 131). At the same time, producers continued
to focus their promotional expenditures on theatrical releases (Wasser 131). As a result,
producers shorted promotions of the video releases of the hip-hopsploitation titles at
exactly the time when they should have been increasing them. Money was going in to
theatrical releases when the developing market was in fact video. Since the majority of
the hip-hopsploitation films did poorly in the box office, the ratio of money spent to
money earned was poor for all but a few of the hip-hopsploitation films. Had the focus
been shifted to take video into account, the hip-hopsploitation films may not have
appeared to be such commercial failures. The hip-hopsploitation films thus slipped
through the cracks as producers lagged behind in realizing consumers’, and especially
teens and youth, increased interest and demand for home video.
Exploitation Fare
This oversight of producers was potentially exacerbated by the unique position of
exploitation content in home entertainment markets. As the producers of early home
audio found, consumers were especially interested in purchasing content for home
consumption that might otherwise be inappropriate or undesirable for live or public
enjoyment. Interestingly, for audio, this translated into the early success of exploitation
genres like vaudeville and “ethnic specialties” (Coleman 19). By definition, part of the
appeal of a highbrow and high status art for like classical music or opera is that the
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consumption of it helps confer higher status on the listener, something that requires
public consumption. By the same token, home audio is private, and thus suits itself to
8
forms of audio that might otherwise mark the listener as lowbrow or low status.
This was just as true with home video, a fact most obviously demonstrated by the
role of pornography in the early home video industry:
The majority of early prerecorded cassettes sold were sexually oriented ‘adult’
titles. In both 1978 and 1979, for example, an estimated 75% of all prerecorded
tapes sold were X-rated (Merchandising, 1980, March, p. 53). There are a
number of possible reasons for this. Early on, there was very little prerecorded
fare of any kind, and adult titles made up a large percentage of all titles available.
While the major studios were reticent to put their material on cassette (Lardner,
1988), the smaller producers of adult material welcomed the new medium
enthusiastically. The production cost of adult films was also far lower than
mainstream films. Finally, early VCR adopters had private and, for the first time,
ready access to intriguing, yet socially unacceptable materials. (Klopfenstein 3031)
In other words, pornography and other exploitation genres that were intriguing and
potentially less socially acceptable, were clearly more suited to home video than other
genres. This includes the hip-hopsploitation film genre. Thus the overemphasis of the
box office release rather than the home video release of the hip-hopsploitation films was
all the more acute in terms of the missed revenue. As a result, while video more
generally met the early demand of consumers for dual functionality, the particular
8
It’s interesting to note the way this factors into hip-hop in particular. As Coleman goes
on to write: “African-American music, with its emphasis on syncopated rhythms and
unbridled emotional expression, became the definitive sound of the new machine and the
new era. Perhaps Andre Millard says it best in his landmark survey America on
Record—‘The single most important cultural accomplishment of the industry of recorded
sound in the twentieth century was to make black U.S. music the popular music of the
world’” Mark Coleman, Playback: From the Victrola to Mp3, 100 Years of Music,
Machines, and Money (Cambridge: De Capo Press, 2003) 21. While I am uncomfortable
with the stereotypical and somewhat racist essentialization of African-American music as
more emotional/unbridled, it does speak to the importance of private consumption in the
appropriation of music and cultural forms in American. It also touches on the assertion I
will make in the following chapters that part of hip-hop’s rearticulation with rap music is
because it more easily fits the racist consumptive patterns and sensibilities of white
consumers. Vaudeville, after all, was the home of blackface minstrelsy and rap music, as
I’ll soon argue, is essentially neo-blackface.
188
political economy of the hip-hopsploitation films as well as the vinyl and audiocassette
market, made the home-audio-friendly articulation of hip-hop to rap music the dominant
articulation of hip-hop culture.
Price, Accessibility, and Market Saturation
Last, but certainly not least, the influence of price, accessibility, and market
saturation/household diffusion of home video and home audio favored the consumption
of an audio representation of hip-hop in the form of rap music rather than the video
representation of hip-hop in the form of the hip-hopsploitation films. Despite the rapid
decrease of price and increase in accessibility and home penetration of video, it was not
enough to favorably position video in relation to audio in the 1980s. As a more
established medium, home audio was more accessible, with a high diffusion rate in
American homes and a much lower price for both hardware and software.
Snapshot of Home Audio in the 1980s: Data
Moving into the 1980s, the home audio industry was characterized by two things:
innovation and saturation. As the data below shows, audiocassette tapes quickly
9
overtook vinyl as the dominant audio form during the 1980s. In part, this was due to the
saturation of the “analog market” in the early to mid-1980s (Bordowitz 45). Audio tapes,
as well as the even more emergent CD technology, were embraced by record companies
in part because they needed a new avenue for sales—people already owned too much
vinyl. Introducing new formats meant that, at least in the short run, sales would be up as
people effectively repurchased their entire music library in the new formats. This also
meant that, for the time being, there was a glut of vinyl on the market, driving down
prices and increasing the accessibility of the format for people that may have previously
found the price prohibitive. In addition, audio tapes and later CDs needed to compete
9
In fact, the U.S. Bureau of the Census stopped including turntables in their data on the
manufacturing industry in 1988, a sign that the era of the record had ended.
189
Figure 3: Average Price of Audio Content by Format
Year
1978
1979
1980
1981
1982
1983
1984
1985
1986
1987
1988
1989
1990
Vinyl
LP/EP
$7.25
$6.71
$7.10
$7.93
$7.89
$8.06
$7.57
$7.67
$7.85
$7.41
$7.35
$6.37
$7.39
Vinyl
Single
$1.37
$1.41
$1.64
$1.66
$2.06
$2.16
$2.27
$2.33
$2.43
$2.48
$2.75
$3.18
$3.42
Cassette
$7.34
$7.30
$7.05
$7.76
$7.59
$7.65
$7.18
$7.11
$7.26
$7.22
$7.52
$7.50
$7.85
Compact
Disc
NA
NA
NA
NA
NA
$21.50
$17.81
$17.23
$17.55
$15.61
$13.96
$12.49
$12.05
Total
Average
$5.69
$5.26
$5.65
$6.25
$6.31
$6.60
$6.43
$6.71
$7.52
$7.88
$8.21
$8.16
$8.71
Figure 4: Number of Units Sold by Format (millions).
Year
1978
1979
1980
1981
1982
1983
1984
1985
1986
1987
1988
1989
1990
Vinyl LP/EP
341.3
318.3
322.8
295.2
243.9
209.6
204.6
167
125.2
107
72.4
34.6
11.7
Vinyl Single
190
195.5
164.3
154.7
137.2
124.8
131.5
120.7
93.9
82
65.6
36.6
27.6
Cassette Tapes
61.3
82.8
110.2
137
182.3
236.8
332
339.1
344.5
410
450.1
446.2
442.2
CD
NA
NA
NA
NA
NA
0.8
5.8
22.6
53
102.1
149.7
207.2
286.5
(Figures 3 and 4 compiled from data in Inside the Recording Industry: A Statistical
Overview-1986 Update 4; Riaa Top Ten Fact Book: Recent Facts, Figures, and
Information About the United States Recording Industry 6)
with the already established vinyl format, helping to keep the price of these emerging
technologies lower than they might otherwise have been (see Figure 3). In short, while
the particular audio formats Americans had in their homes were in a state of transition,
190
the fact remains that most homes contained some form of home audio technologies—
often vinyl based, since that was by far the most established technology—and that the
cost of those technologies was relatively low.
Snapshot of Home Video in the 1980s: Data
While the state of home video moving into the 1980s could certainly be
characterized by innovation, it was also an unstable industry. Whereas the innovation in
the home audio market was tempered by an already entrenched technology, home video
was too emergent a technology. Home audio could simultaneously take advantage of
price competition introduced by audiocassette tapes and the stabilizing force of vinylbased audio systems. As an emergent medium, video was unable to take advantage of the
same dynamic, and the home video market was thus characterized by instability during its
first decade. There’s no doubt that competition between the Betamax and VHS, as well
as between the VCR and video-disc formats more generally, helped increase consumer
awareness and decrease price. However, as the data shows, this change did not occur
until well into the 1980s, and VCR owners remained relatively wealthy up through the
mid to late-80s. “The VCR penetration level among households with less than $20,000
income was only 16.8% in November 1987. This figure rises to 73% among households
with $20,000 to $50,000 incomes and to 82.7% among those with $50,000+ incomes”
(Lindstrom 44). The price decreases, though substantial, were not enough to increase
diffusion to lower income brackets, leaving VCRs as a relatively upscale product. The
instability may also have further discouraged VCR purchases by new market segments.
Home video can generally be divided into two distinct phases with an initial
emphasis on time-shifting that gave way to an emphasis on prerecorded content in the
mid-1980s as prerecorded videos became more widely available (Klopfenstein 32). “The
initial VCR purchasers were enticed into the marketplace because they wanted more
television,” however by 1987, VCR purchases were primarily for the purpose of watching
prerecorded content (Lindstrom 46). This is also in part a result of the increased
191
availability of prerecorded content due to the establishment of video rental clubs and
stores. As Figure 5 indicates, the stabilization of rental prices didn’t occur until the mid80s. At that point, studios were sufficiently reassured that they would get enough
revenue from their content under copyright. Even so, while diffusion rates continued
increasing at a remarkable rate for a new media technology, it was still under 70% (See
Figure 7), over 20% lower than home audio system diffusion.
Figure 5: Growth of U.S. Home Video, 1978-1992
(reproduced from Wasser 68)
Year
Cumulative
Cumulative
Manufactured VCRs
VCRs*
purchased by
(thousands)
U.S. dealers
(thousands)
1978
2,232
402
1979
4,431
877
1980
8,872
1,682
1981
18,370
3,043
1982
31,505
5,078
1983
50,030
9,169
1984
79,464
16,784
1985
112,108
28,121
1986
148,624
40,126
1987
183,013
51,828
1988
219,970
62,576
1989
257,244
72,336
1990
296,182
82,445
1991
337,009
93,176
1992
371,109
105,502
U.S. VCRs
as
percentage
of U.S. TV
households
2.40
3.10
5.70
9.90
17.60
27.30
37.20
51.70
62.20
67.70
70.20
73.30
75.60
Average
wholesale price
per unit of U.S.
VCRs (dollars)
811
819
771
828
640
528
471
368
331
294
259
270
241
231
239
Average
Video
Cassette
Rental Price
(dollars)*
NA
NA
7.00
5.00
3.00
2.80
2.60
2.38
2.28
2.15
2.20
2.26
2.31
2.30
2.36
* added from Table 3.4 Rental Stores and Rental Prices, 1979-1992 (Wasser 101)
192
Comparative Analysis of Data: Price and Home
Penetration Rates
It’s clear from Figures 6 and 7 below that the relative price and penetration rates
of home audio and video favored home audio. In 1980 the price of a VCR was roughly
6.5 times the price of a turntable, and the price of a pre-recorded video-cassette almost
9.5 times the price of a vinyl LP. By the time the hip-hopsploitation film cycle was
winding down, that figure had shifted significantly but not enough: in 1986 the price of a
VCR was still over 3.3 times the price of a turntable, and the price of a video-cassette
was 4.7 times the price of a vinyl LP. Similarly, the penetration rate—the percentage of
households containing a given item—of home audio was in the 80s for the entire duration
of the hip-hopsploitation film cycle (1983-1986) while the penetration rate of home video
ranged from only 13% in 1983 to 40% in 1986, still well below half of households.
Figure 6: Estimated Average Retail Prices (retail
value/#units shipped)
Year
Compact
System
Portable
Tape
Decks
Tape
Decks
Turntables
1980
1981
1982
1983
1984
1985
1986
1987
1988
1989
$224.08
$193.68
$278.76
$229.60
$214.17
$205.02
$169.48
$169.54
NA
NA
$61.87
$56.53
$52.73
$50.00
$48.69
$48.25
$47.30
$46.89
$46.42
$46.71
$248.60
$220.66
$209.33
$195.45
$180.90
$193.83
$188.33
$193.42
$194.42
$187.42
$133.13
$139.76
$140.24
$132.08
$125.59
$119.28
$119.49
$117.22
NA
NA
PreRecorded
Video
Cassettes
$66.65
$73.47
$62.52
$54.24
$48.39
$44.39
$36.92
$34.94
NA
NA
VCRs
$870.65
$794.74
$662.07
$572.89
$482.15
NA
$399.45
$389.15
$395.34
$382.71
(Compiled from data in the 1983-1993 editions of the U.S. Bureau of the Census)
193
Put simply, home video hardware and software was more expensive and less
prevalent in U.S. homes than home audio hardware or software; home video was far less
accessible than home audio during the mid-1980s. With two competing articulations of
hip-hop in play—hip-hop as a set of cultural practices centered around breaking, graffiti,
and early party DJing vs. hip-hop as rap music culture—the accessibility of audio made
the conditions of possibility such that the corresponding aurally-oriented articulation held
a crucial edge over the more visually oriented one. As a result, hip-hop was rearticulated
as rap music culture rather than as a set of cultural practices.
Figure 7: Penetration Rates of Consumer Electronics
Year
1983
1984
1985
1986
1987
1988
1989
1990
1991
All
TV
98%
98%
98%
98%
98%
98%
98%
98%
98%
VCR
13%
20%
30%
40%
52%
61%
68%
72%
77%
Home
Radio
98%
98%
98%
98%
98%
98%
98%
98%
98%
Audio
Systems
81%
87%
88%
88%
89%
90%
92%
93%
94%
Compact
Audio
45%
51%
51%
52%
54%
56%
58%
61%
63%
(Compiled from the 1984-1992 editions of the Electronic Market Data Book)
Conclusion
The relative accessibility of the home audio technologies in comparison to the
corresponding home video technologies helped influence the way hip-hop itself diffused
into American culture. To put it in Kittlerian terms, “Technological changes occurring
on the levels of material deployment prior to questions of meaning will affect the
changing configurations of meaning” (Winthrop-Young "Drill and Distraction in the
Yellow Submarine: On the Dominance of War in Friedrich Kittler's Media Theory" 843).
194
In other words, changes in technology cause changes in the cultural meaning built atop
that technology. The way that changes occur on the level of media—the level of the
elements, cultural forms and practices of hip-hop as well as the level of technology
itself—influence the way we make meaning out of those practices and forms. Thus all
the factors that lead home audio to have an advantage over home video in the consumer
marketplace of the 1980s, have a consequent effect on how hip-hop itself can enter the
marketplace. Since the technological conditions of possibility favored hip-hop as
articulated to rap music culture, the meaning of hip-hop in American society was
rearticulated away from hip-hop as a set of cultural practices cohering around breaking,
graffiti, and party-DJing.
As McLuhan wrote in Understanding Media, “The latest approach to media
studies considers not only the ‘content but the medium and the cultural matrix within
which the particular medium operates” (Understanding Media 18-19). For all the
problems with technological determinism, and particularly McLuhan’s universalizing
work, he is here hitting on an important requirement for any comprehensive study of the
media, a recommendation I have endeavored to take to heart in this dissertation. In
Chapters 2 and 3, I focused on the content of the hip-hopsploitation films and outlined the
competing articulations of hip-hop at work in the 1980s. In this chapter, and Chapter 4
before it, I have analyzed the medium itself: focusing first on hip-hop as a medium, as
well as the competing media technologies of home audio and video. In Chapter 6, then, I
will begin to examine the cultural matrix within which hip-hop operated in the 1980s. In
particular, I will argue that the racial, ideological, and socio-cultural politics of hip-hop
articulated through rapping made it more suitable for consumption than hip-hop as
articulated to a set of cultural practices.
195
CHAPTER 6:
HIP-HOP, ARTICULATION, AND THE IDEOLOGY OF RACIALIZATION
Introduction
In the preceding chapters, my use of articulation theory, among other strategies of
inquiry, has helped me yield two important results. First, through an intertextual reading
of the hip-hopsploitation film genre, I’ve demonstrated that two competing articulations
of hip-hop were being offered to mainstream American society as hip-hop transitioned
away from its roots as a Bronx subculture. Despite the predominance of an articulation
of hip-hop to breaking and graffiti as a set of cultural practices within the early hiphopsploitation films, by the late-80s this articulation was replaced by one connecting hiphop to MCing as rap music culture. Second, I’ve shown that the material conditions of
media technology may have been one force aiding in this process of articulation, doing so
by limiting the possibilities available for the mainstream cultural production of hip-hop.
In this final chapter, I synthesize both, using them as a foundation on which to build a
more sustained application of articulation theory to hip-hop culture. Through this, I hope
to establish a clearer picture of why this rearticulation took place as well as evaluate what
some of the implications may be of articulating hip-hop to rap music culture.
More specifically, I conduct a more detailed examination of the way that race and
ideology aided in this rearticulation. I start by calling into question the basic assumption
that hip-hop is an “authentic” manifestation of black popular culture, arguing that there is
in fact no-necessary connection between hip-hop and “blackness.” Rather, what connects
“blackness” and “hip-hop” has been the need for hip-hop to be perceived as
“authentically” black so it could be sold to a mainstream audience that, whether
accurately or not, is understood as being largely white. I then use theories of race and
racial performance to argue that the racial politics of mid-1980s America limited the
196
conditions of possibility for how hip-hop could be defined for the public. These
conditions pushed hip-hop to perform a violent hyper-masculine “blackness” so that it
could be consumed by whites as a kind of neo-blackface minstrelsy. Following this, I
conclude the chapter with a brief overview of what this may in fact tell us about whites
and white culture at this point in the mid-1980s.
Articulated Hip-Hop
In Chapters 2 and 3 I delineated two competing articulations of hip-hop depicted
in the hip-hopsploitation films. The primary articulation in the films is one that connects
hip-hop to breaking, graffiti, and early-DJing elements as constitutive practices, while the
secondary articulation connects hip-hop to rapping as rap music culture. Along with
these two articulations also comes a string of secondary connections that link hip-hop to
particular configurations of racial, gender, and sexual politics. For example, in my
Chapter 3 case study of Beat Street, I demonstrated that the through the articulation of
hip-hop as a set of cultural practices, most of the hip-hopsploitation films represented a
version of hip-hop that was multi-racial, multi-cultural, and relatively more inclusive of
women and diverse sexual identities. While certainly not unproblematic, Beat Street
nevertheless represents a way of understanding hip-hop contrary to its current hegemonic
definition as rap music culture, which has frequently been critiqued for its misogyny,
homophobia, and hyper-masculine blackness.
But how or why does this shift occur? For hip-hop scholar Gwendolyn Pough,
the answer is easy. She writes, “Quite frankly, rap music was easier to co-opt and exploit
because the production costs of an album are far less than those of a film, and it’s easier
to produce and sell thousands of rap records than one piece of graffiti art on canvas.
Rap—like other forms of Black music that went before it—was ready-made for capital
gain” (Pough 4). I agree with the gist of her claim, as I’ve more or less shown in
Chapters 4-5; the relative high price and difficulty of commodifying visual rather than
aural culture were certainly limiting factors that helped lead to the rearticulation of hip-
197
hop as rap music. Though it may be true, this is not to say that it is the only or
determining factor in this shift. While her assertion seems over-simplistic in assigning
sole causality to the different production costs, her claim is nevertheless important and I
want to spend a moment analyzing it in more detail as I believe it prefigures the argument
I make in this chapter.
In the first part of the quote, Pough cites the comparatively low production cost of
commodifying rap rather than breaking or graffiti. Pough’s claim is of course predicated
on an acknowledgement that breaking and graffiti were the first two elements to be
commercialized. What’s important about this is that it begins to denormalize the notion
that rapping is naturally central to hip-hop by showing that, at another point in time,
under other circumstance, another set of practices were central to hip-hop. This, by
extension, means that rap’s position at the center of hip-hop is constructed rather than
necessary. Though Pough’s claim rests solely on the disparity in production costs, it
echoes the argument I made in Chapters 4-5 that the material conditions set by the
available means of media technologies helped to achieve the rearticulation of hip-hop as
rap music culture. Once the seemingly necessary centrality of rap music to hip-hop
culture has been destabilized, it opens up the possibility of further examining what other
factors may have contributed to this rearticulation.
The second part of Pough’s quote above offers a possible clue as to what other
factors may have been involved. By framing rap as black culture ready made for
commodification, she seems to be suggesting that what is really being commodified with
rap is in fact blackness itself. Since—as discussed in Chapter 2 in relation to genre and
categorization—the only characteristics “essential” to texts within a category like “Black
music” are the qualities identified by the descriptive modifiers contained within the very
term used to refer to the category, what makes “Black music” like rap perfect for
commodification is its blackness. In other words, we can read the above quote from
Pough as simply stating that the commercial success of hip-hop was tied to it being
198
defined as black. This is also consistent with the way the hip-hopsploitation films
articulate breaking, graffiti, and early-DJing—hip-hop as a set of cultural practices—as
multi-cultural and multi-racial, while the articulation of hip-hop to rap music culture
remains even now predicated on the notion that hip-hop is black. To reframe it in terms
of articulation theory, there is no necessary correspondence between blackness and hiphop. Rather, the connection between hip-hop and blackness is contingent, part and parcel
of the process of articulation that constantly constructs the definition of a cultural form
like hip-hop within the public sphere. A brief detour through articulation theory is thus
necessary before continuing.
Articulation Theory
In some ways the two points I’ve drawn from Pough’s quote are thumbnail
versions of the two positions that the theory and method of articulation is intended to
reconcile. Put simplistically, the two points in Pough’s quote can be summed up, in the
vein of Hall, as either “economic” or “sociological” (Hall "Race, Articulation, and
Societies Structured in Dominance" 17). In the first part, Pough reduces the answer to
simply one of economics; the determining factor in shifting away from breaking and
graffiti is the cost disparity of producing them as commodities. My interpretation of the
second part of her quote—that a determining factor was actually Blackness—can then
stand in for the notion that social factors like race are instead the primary factors in this
kind of cultural shift: the sociological, or alternately, culturalist, perspective. In this
view, the social relations have, “there own forms of structuration, have their own specific
effects, which cannot be explained away as mere surface forms of appearance of
economic relations, or adequately theorized by reducing them to the economic level of
determination” (Hall "Race, Articulation, and Societies Structured in Dominance" 18).
In the words of Hall, these two positions were “counterposed to one another,” where:
The first tendency, whether Marxist or not, gives an overall determinacy to the
economic level. This, it is said, imparts a hard center—a materialist basis—to the
otherwise soft-centeredness or culturalism of ethnic studies. The stress on the
199
sociological aspects, in the second tendency, is then a sort of direct reply to this
first emphasis. It aims to introduce a necessary complexity into the simplifying
schemas of an economic reductionism. Social formations, the second tendency
argues, are complex ensembles, composed of several different structures, none of
which is reducible to the other. (Hall "Race, Articulation, and Societies Structured
in Dominance" 18)
The concept of articulation, then, springs up as a way of reconciling these two
positions. While it begins to coalesce out of this dialectical position, it is eventually
taken up and developed in a more sustained fashion as a theory first by Ernesto Laclau,
and then by Stuart Hall. For Laclau, articulation is more specifically a way of accounting
for the failure of economic reductionist lines of thinking to take into account the way that
class discourses operate differently in different circumstances (Slack "The Theory and
Method of Articulation in Cultural Studies" 118). In other words, class in 18th century
India operates differently than it does in Australia today. For Laclau, articulation is a
way of describing the connection made between two or more concepts through a process
of discourse. As Slack points out, however, the major drawback to Laclau’s approach is
that it tended to reduce everything to discourse, in the process making any concrete
political intervention difficult in the face of a “totally open discursive field” (Hall in
Slack "The Theory and Method of Articulation in Cultural Studies" 120). In some ways,
this places Laclau’s initial theory of articulation squarely in line with the “sociological”
tendency, where the strict materiality of economic reductionism is replaced by a kind of
discursively constructed set of social relations completely unhinged from any material
grounding.
Hall’s subsequent theorization of articulation, while emerging out of the work of
Laclau (and his partner Chantelle Mouffe), is thus once again aimed at correcting the
tendency of falling into one of the two positions, the economic or the sociological, while
also avoiding the dislocation of Laclau’s approach. Hall does this by combining three
important things in his theory of articulation. “First,” Slack writes:
he resists the temptation of reduction to class, mode of production, structure, as
well as to culturalism’s tendency to reduce culture to ‘experience.’ Second, he
elevates the importance of articulating discourse to other social forces, without
200
going ‘over the brink’ of turning everything into discourse. Third, Hall’s
commitment to the strategic feature of articulation has foregrounded cultural
studies’ interventionist commitments. (Slack "The Theory and Method of
Articulation in Cultural Studies" 121)
Hall was thus able to ensure that articulation would become an important tool in cultural
studies by not only striking a balance of both the economic and sociological (or
alternately, discursive or culturalism), but by also continuing to emphasize the cultural
studies commitment to making scholarship that is explicitly political.
This basic configuration is important since in my dissertation I base my use of
articulation as an approach and theory on Hall’s work—in part via its further
development by Slack and Grossberg. This also helps structure my inquiry into hip-hop.
In the first two chapters, I used the hip-hopsploitation films to examine the intertextual
discursive construction of hip-hop. In the next two chapters, I grounded the shift in this
construction within a materialist reading of media technologies, their costs of production,
and their political economies. To bring my analysis more fully in line with Hall’s
approach, I must then balance the work done in these earlier chapters with both an
examination of the social forces at work in this re-articulation of hip-hop, as well as an
accounting for the critical intervention I see this work making. Since the latter is tied to
the former in the case of my dissertation, I will now turn to an examination of hip-hop
culture through articulation.
Culture As Articulated
As I’ve already suggested with my reading of Pough’s quote above, since the
reduction of analysis to the level of the economic is inadequate to read the full
complexity of articulation, we must look at the other social forces at play in this
articulation. And, as I’ve also suggested above, the politics surrounding social and
identity categories like race, class, and gender may have been forces aiding in this rearticulation of hip-hop from breaking and graffiti to rap music. For Hall, the connections
that come together to construct something like hip-hop are not only “historically
produced,” but more importantly, they are “the site of the struggle over power”
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(Grossberg "History, Politics and Postmodernism: Stuart Hall and Cultural Studies" 156).
Thinking about this articulation of hip-hop in terms of a struggle over power is a key
component of my analysis, and through it I hope to offer two important correctives to the
study of hip-hop history. Briefly put, the first has been to show that the construction of
hip-hop as rap music culture is historically contingent rather than given. I’ve done this in
part by showing that an alternative understanding of hip-hop existed prior to the
ascendency of the definition of hip-hop as rap music. Hip-hop cannot then be thought of
as simply an inevitable progression—the necessary evolution of rap music along a
smooth trajectory.
The second corrective I hope to offer is that, by reading this re-articulation as in
part a struggle for power, we can come to reframe how we understand hip-hop’s
development. The dominant historical narrative of hip-hop has tended to frame it as the
evolution of oppositional black culture—a way for black youth to carve out a space of
resistance within an oppressive and dominant white culture. This is certainly an
important narrative to acknowledge and explore, but it is not the only narrative, and a
1
reliance on it as the sole narrative limits the scope of how we can understand hip-hop.
As suggested by my reading of Hall at the end of Chapter 3, such a simplistic narrative
reduces the inherent complexity of black popular culture. However we can quickly see
that this dominant narrative of hip-hop as simply the development of a counterhegemonic and resistant mode of self-expression on the part of dispossessed AfricanAmerican youth in the Bronx is inadequate as an explanation for why hip-hop
transitioned from breaking and graffiti to rapping in the mid to late-1980s; the power
struggle it describes does not account for this particular shift. This failure illuminates the
1
What’s more, through articulation, the seeming naturalness attributed to this
development within the narrative must be read as a series of articulations joined by
ideology rather than necessity—i.e. the narrative is revealed as a set of non-necessary
correspondences.
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need for a more complete picture of how hip-hop culture developed, especially within the
1980s.
Reading hip-hop as articulated culture is one way of filling in that picture. What
this means in practice, however, is that we continue to break hip-hop down into its
articulated components; we must highlight the connections and correspondences that
come together to construct hip-hop. From there, we can begin to piece it back together,
this time paying careful attention to what is at stake in making each of the connections.
This is where the concept of non-necessary correspondence or connection comes in
handy. Since “Culture is never merely a set of practices, technologies or messages,
objects whose meaning and identity can be guaranteed by the origin of their intrinsic
essences” (Grossberg "History, Politics and Postmodernism: Stuart Hall and Cultural
Studies" 157), we know that there must be something else that holds these connections
together. As Grossberg puts it:
Cultural practices are signifying practices… the meaning of a cultural form is not
intrinsic to it; a text does not offer a transparent surface upon or through which we
may discern its meaning in some non-textual origin, as if it had been deposited
there, once and for all, at the moment of its origin. The meaning is not in the text
itself but is the active product of the text’s social articulation, of the web of
connotations and codes into which it is inserted. (Grossberg "History, Politics and
Postmodernism: Stuart Hall and Cultural Studies" 157)
The meaning of hip-hop—how hip-hop is defined—cannot be determined by the
seemingly inherent qualities of those things that come to define or represent it. Rather,
that meaning is constructed through those particular qualities, at that particular time, for
some particular purposes.
To put it in more concrete—if potentially controversial—terms for my project,
hip-hop cannot be reduced simply to rap music culture or a product of black popular
culture. Doing either rests on assuming that that there is a necessary correspondence
between several articulated positions. First, it links hip-hop and rap to black popular
culture as if the first two are the products of the last—some sort of intrinsic cause and
effect linkage. Second, it implies that there is some intrinsic (essential) quality of
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blackness that both defines a particular culture and can itself create a cultural product.
Lest this seem like simply a way to justify cultural appropriation, the flip of this also
means that there are no necessary correspondences between hip-hop and a long chain of
descriptive qualities, for example those that link it to misogyny, homophobia, violence,
and hyper-masculinity, qualities for which hip-hop has long been critique. While this
“string of signifiers” has been pervasively articulated to hip-hop, they do not arise
naturally out of some innate qualities found within hip-hop itself, but come to be
articulated within hip-hop as part of the social forces—the struggle for power and
meaning—in which hip-hop is situated.
The Articulation of Hip-Hop to Blackness
In fact, it is the pervasiveness of hip-hop’s articulation to blackness, in particular
a misogynistic, homophobic, and violent hyper-masculine representation of blackness
associated with “gangsta rap, that makes it so important to question their articulation.
Something, it would seem, is at stake in insuring that hip-hop remains articulated to this
representation of blackness. As already argued above, representation does not determine
meaning, meaning constructs its own representation in order to express itself; meaning
determines representation. This is ideology. In short, the definition of hip-hop is not
homologically defined, but ideologically defined. These various component of hip-hop
come to be articulated together not because of some internally mandated logic, but as a
function of ideology. As Grossberg explains it, using a quote from Hall:
“it depends… on the way concrete practices are used and implemented in concrete
historical conditions, the [strength] with which certain codes are constituted as ‘in
dominance,’ the relations of struggle within the social relations of representation.”
It is the struggle to articulate certain codes into a position of dominance, to
legitimate their claim, not only to define the meaning of cultural forms but to
define the relations of that meaning (and hence, the text) to reality as one of
representation, that defines the specificity of the ideological. That is, ideological
practices entail a double articulation of the signifier, first to a web of connotation
(signification) and second, to real social practices and subject-positions
(representations). (Grossberg "History, Politics and Postmodernism: Stuart Hall
and Cultural Studies" 158-59)
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The rearticulation of hip-hop away from graffiti and breaking as a set of cultural practices
and towards rap music culture as the dominant articulation of hip-hop can here be
reframed as the result of conditions set by ideology. Hip-hop becomes articulated to rap
music—along with the string of other signifiers and representations—in service of some
ideological position. “The meaning of a cultural form and its place or position in the
cultural field is not inscribed inside its form” (Hall in Grossberg "History, Politics and
Postmodernism: Stuart Hall and Cultural Studies" 158), it is instead determined by a set
of ideological practices. Hip-Hop is articulated to rap music, and through that, to
blackness, misogyny, homophobia, violence, and hyper-masculinity, by ideology.
Hip-Hop as Black
Before moving into an examination of the particular ideological position that I
believe is at work in this articulation of hip-hop to blackness, I want to take a moment to
review why it is particularly important to interrogate the articulation of hip-hop to
blackness. To put it simply, we can justify calling the articulation of hip-hop as black
into question on two primary grounds: the discursive/historical and the
theoretical/political. Though a reductive dichotomy, each represents a particular set of
justifications for this examination. In the first case, the historical narrative of hip-hop
contains significant evidence that calls this articulation into question. To be clear, I’m
not suggesting that this is reflective of some underlying “reality,” the true, authentic, or
real hip-hop. I’m simply talking about the way that scholars, historians, and others have
constructed a historical discourse of hip-hop as black, while simultaneously destabilizing
this very assertion within that same discourse. In the second instance, I want to look
more carefully at some of the theoretical reasons for questioning hip-hop’s articulation to
blackness. Though either line of questioning is going to be political, the theoretical
reasons are often expressly so.
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Racializing Historical Discourses: The Mysterious Case
of the Latino Elision
Even if we put aside my claim from Chapters 2 and 3 that the hip-hopsploitation
films represent an articulation of hip-hop—hip-hop as a set of cultural practices—as
much more multi-cultural and multi-ethnic, there is significant evidence within scholarly
discourses that support this as well. Though these same discourses work to create the
hegemonic understanding of hip-hop as black, they also provide us with an interesting
example of its instability. In its simplest form, what I am talking about is the tendency of
scholars to chronicle the multi-ethnic contributions of hip-hop while ultimately falling
back on a reinscription of hip-hop as black. My conversation with noted hip-hop
historian Jeff Chang is a particularly telling example of how this functions. I attended a
lecture Chang delivered on the history of hip-hop, focusing largely on mapping the
historical and geographical terrain of the Bronx. This included the urban neglect caused
by the city planning policies of Robert Moses, namely the building of the cross-Bronx
expressway and other motorways allowing for the suburbanization of New York, and the
rise and fall of the gang culture. At one point Chang excoriated the New York
Metropolitan Transit Authority for profiling graffiti writers as black and brown during the
Graffiti Wars in the early 80s, since, in his words, “most of the graffiti writers were
white.”
During a conversation the following day, I asked him about what I saw as this
move by him, as well as some other scholars, away from simply defining hip-hop as
black popular culture and instead locating it as a product of the unique historical
conditions of the South Bronx. The claim he’d made only the night before seemed to go
out the window as he answered: “hip-hop is absolutely black, it’s black popular culture.”
He went on to explain that he felt it was important to continually reaffirm this fact,
especially for someone like himself, an Asian-Pacific Islander (i.e. someone that is not
black). Chang’s answer exemplifies the tendency of scholars working on hip-hop to
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articulate it with blackness—to the point that hip-hop becomes a function of blackness—
despite themselves presenting contradictory material evidence seemingly pointing in
2
another direction. Chang’s comprehensive history of hip-hop, Can’t Stop Won’t Stop,
mirrors this contradiction too. As already noted in Chapter 4, the first section of his
book, “Babylon is Burning,” clearly locates hip-hop within the multicultural space of the
Bronx during the late-70s and 80s. Yet despite this tendency to characterize early hiphop through a multi-ethnic population, Chang repeatedly returns to a reductionist reading
of hip-hop as essentially black.
Chang is far from alone in this. Many of the scholars working at the forefront of
hip-hop studies tend to do the same. Most often, this plays out in what I call the “Latino
elision,” where the contribution of Latinos in hip-hop is continually acknowledged and
then omitted within the dominant historical narrative. One of the clearest examples of
this is in Watkins discussion of hip-hop in film. As he writes:
The origins of hip hop are difficult to record precisely. And while my focus is on
African American youth, hip hop has never been an exclusively ‘black thing.’
Many of the creative elements of hip hop developed in correspondence with the
postwar migrations and subsequent sifting racial geography of New York City.
The interaction between Latino, Afro-Caribbean, and African American
expressive cultures established the conditions for the development of alternative
modes of youth expression. (Watkins Representing 65-66)
Despite this admission by Watkins, he continues to discuss hip-hop as if it were solely the
product of black culture within the rest of his book, and indeed his thesis relies on
2
This is not to say that I don’t recognize the need Chang is describing and indeed
feeling in his answer to my question. There has been a very real and significant—
politically, socially, economically—history of cultural appropriation by the social
institutions and forces of white America. This is especially true in relation to black
culture and cultural products. The appropriation of this culture has no doubt helped
perpetuate many of the inequalities suffered by African-Americans at the hands of AngloAmericans. The goal of my question to Chang, and indeed—as I’ll discuss in more detail
shortly—this project, is not to continue this appropriation, to sanction it, aide it, or justify
it in any way. The purpose instead is to open a space where this canonical articulation
can be questioned and its significance explored.
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understanding hip-hop as black culture. Similarly, many scholars refer to the roots of hiphop in “Black and Latino” youth, communities, or people (Boyd 15; Pough 7; Cepeda 3)
in one sentence, while then reducing hip-hop to African-American culture in the
surrounding pages. Even Greg Tate, in the introduction of his edited collection on the
white appropriation of black culture, refers to the origins of hip-hop in the “AfricanAmerican and Puerto Rican South Bronx,” only to forget this a few paragraphs later in
discussing hip-hop as black (Tate 7-8).
The Latino elision is also evident in the growing body of literature aimed at
correcting this oversight, particularly with regard to recognizing the contributions of
Puerto Ricans in hip-hop. As Raquel Rivera begins in New York Ricans From the Hip
Hop Zone, “New York Puerto Ricans have been an integral part of hip hop culture since
the creative movement’s first stirrings in New York City during the early 1970s. They
have been key players in the evolution of hip-hop art forms—among them MCing or
rapping, DJing, breaking or ‘breakdancing,’ and graffiti—from the beginning of the
movement” (Rivera 1). Other Latin@ authors like Juan Flores, Raquel Cepeda, and
Cristina Véran have similarly documented the contributions of Latin@s in hip-hop and its
constitutive elements, seeking to amend the historical record and stop the elision.
What’s I think is interesting here, however, is the degree to which the historical
record seems to already include an acknowledgment of this contribution. As Donalson
writes, “Unlike other movements, from its earliest years, hip hop contained conspicuous
intercultural aspects. Specifically, during its birth in the Bronx, New York, teens from
African American, black Caribbean, and Puerto Rican backgrounds participated in hip
hop’s various forms” (Donalson 2). He goes on to add elements from Asian, Brazilian,
and white cultural forms to the list of influences. A couple lines later Donalson even
more pointedly states that, “Although a convincing argument could be made that ‘rap’
has its origins and development within black culture, hip hop expression have been
shaped by various racial, ethnic, and cultural contributors…. The multiracial
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composition of the hip-hop movement remains a significant, measurable component”
(Donalson 3).
Donalson also sites a passage from Watkins’ 2005 book, Hip Hop Matters, where
the very same scholar noted above for falling back on the equation of hip-hop as AfricanAmerican culture, is here quoted as recognizing that hip-hop, “has always been
multiracial, multicultural, and multilingual. Those qualities formed a movement that has
defied all attempts to impose the strict racial definitions and caricatures that endeavor to
limit its potential reach and influence” (Donalson 3; Watkins Hip-Hop Matters 150).
Though I clearly agree with the first part of Watkins’ claim, the second piece not only
seems patently incorrect, but it also contradicts the substance of his own scholarship. As
I’ve tried to show already, these qualities do seem to have formed hip-hop, though they
were in fact unable to defy their subsequent erasure through the re-articulation of hip-hop
as black culture. The Latino elision demonstrates a clear example of the way “strict
racial definitions and caricatures” continue to be imposed on hip-hop.
Excurses: Hip-Hop and the One Drop Rule
In many ways, the phenomenon I’ve described as the Latino elision resembles one
of America’s most persistent, if not always recognized as such, mechanisms of
racialization: the “one-drop-rule.” The one-drop-rule defines “any person with any
known African black ancestry” as black (or African-American, or Afro-American, or
Negro, depending on the time period) such that even “a single drop of ‘black blood’” is
sufficient to define a person’s racial identity as black (Davis 5). The tendency described
by the Latino elision, whereby hip-hop culture is recognized to spring from “Latino and
black” youth, if not a wider diversity, but ultimately essentialized as a product of AfricanAmerican culture, can thus be read as an interesting reinscription of the one-drop-rule.
Simplistically put, as the analogy functions, hip-hop culture becomes the body and its
contributors, founders, practitioners, and innovators become its blood. Though this
“blood” is recognized as coming from Caribbean, Latino, Asian, and even white sources
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in addition to black or African-American sources, it is the simple presence of the latter
that is enough to make the whole body of hip-hop black.
The critique of the “one-drop-rule” has generally stemmed from its origins within
slavery and Jim Crow legal doctrine, and its apparent reliance on the biological essence
of “black blood” in determining racial identity. In its original use, the one-drop-rule
functioned as a way of ensuring that the offspring of white slave holders and their slaves
would remain slaves. This would seem to be both a way of maintaining the stability of
the social order that allowed white men to “take” slaves as mistresses by ensuring that the
offspring of these unions would not challenge the “legitimate” offspring of the slave
holder and his white wife, while also offering slave holders a way of “increasing” their
holdings (Hickman 1176). It also worked to increase the political power of the south by
concentrating the representational power of a large group of disenfranchised people in the
hands of another group of people that would administer that power. Thus white slave
holders could accrue and spend the fraction of political capital assigned their slaves by
law without worrying about those same people attempting to exercise that power for
themselves (in a way that might threaten the slave holders agenda). As the one-drop-rule
was solidified during the Jim Crow era, its underlying warrant also changed. The onedrop-rule became a matter of ensuring white racial purity, though this too has its obvious
political ramifications in maintaining the concentration of power in the hands of whites.
Having already touched on essentialism earlier in the dissertation, and given my
intention to discuss it again below, I will forego elaborating on the role of essentialism in
critiquing the one-drop-rule. That said, I want to briefly sketch one of the effects that
critics of the one-drop-rule attribute to this essentialism. In general, these critiques tend
to cohere around the identity of the “mixed race,” “biracial,” or “multiethnic” person and
their inability to claim agency over their own identity. This line of critique found its
clearest expression in the multi-cultural movement’s attack on the census bureau’s
collection of demographic data (Hickman) at the turn of the millennium. It was argued
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that another check box should be added to allow people of mixed-race ancestry to selfdetermine how their racial identity would be recorded (ultimately this lead to the
allowance of checking as many boxes as respondents felt applied to their identity). More
broadly put by Davis, the costs of the one-drop-rule are “ambiguities, strains, conflicts,
and traumas…. [and] can result in personal traumas and deep dilemmas concerning
personal identity” (Davis 169).
Counter to all of this is a competing discourse that affectively defends the one3
drop-rule. Boiled down, these arguments claim that the one-drop-rule works in a
Foucauldian sense to constitute a population as such, thereby making it possible for them
to struggle for power and agency; the oppression of a group of people based on difference
constitutes them as a group defined by that difference, making it possible to struggle for
equality as that group. In the words of legal scholar Christine Hickman:
we should recall the famous exchange between Faust and Goethe's Devil:
Faust: Say at least, who you are?
Mephistopheles: I am part of that power which ever wills evil yet ever
accomplishes good.
So it was with the one drop rule. The Devil fashioned it out of racism, malice,
greed, lust, and ignorance, but in so doing he also accomplished good: His rule
created the African-American race as we know it today, and while this race has its
origins in the peoples of three continents and its members can look very different
from one another, over the centuries the Devil's one drop rule united this race as a
people in the fight against slavery, segregation, and racial injustice. (Hickman
1166)
Without the ability to conceive of African-Americans as a group, Hickman argues, there
is no way to identify the forms of racism that this group face, and thus no possibility for
them to fight that racism as a group. This explains, for example, why prominent civil
rights groups like the NAACP and its Latino equivalent, La Raza, opposed attempts to
include a mixed race box on the 2000 Census, arguing that it would make it difficult to
3
I will of course be excluding those defenses that spring from overtly racist and prowhite supremacist agendas.
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accurately track and enforce anti-descrimination and civil rights law violations (Prewitt
10-11). While such arguments are effective in countering the first critique of the onedrop-rule as the product of a racist institution, they fail to take into account the
essentialist critique, either at the level of limited self-determination or the level of broader
post-structuralist and post-colonial critiques of anti-essentialism.
Nevertheless, Hickman’s claim may also offer an explanation for the way the onedrop-rule functions within hip-hop culture. Though the one-drop-rule in the U.S. is
specific to black racial identity, it is also part of a more general mode of racialization
called “hypo-descent.” Through hypo-descent people of mixed race ancestry are
“assigned the status of the subordinated group” (Davis 5). Reframing Hickman’s
response in these more generalized terms helps bring into focus two possible explanations
for why hypo-descent functions in hip-hop to articulate it to blackness: racial/ethnic pride
and progressive political status. In the first case, we could read hypo-descent within hiphop as the result of the pressures of ethnic pride found within subordinated groups. In
general, it tends to be subordinated groups that must make a concerted effort to
distinguish their forms of culture from the often-normalized culture of the dominant
group. This manifests in the tendency within marginalized groups to assert the
distinctiveness and even superiority of their ancestry. A good example of this is the
Afrocentrism movement that seeks to reclaim or revise, depending on politics, the
historical narrative of African history and thus African-diasporic history. Following
along these lines, we can read the operation of hypo-descent rules within hip-hop as
partly the result of a need for African-American’s to have readily identifiable cultural
forms in which to take pride. Claiming ownership over as influential a cultural form as
hip-hop is a means of not only gaining power, but also asserting cultural legitimacy and
demanding recognition of the equality of African-American contributions to society. In
short, hip-hop becomes interpolated into black culture as a means of expressing cultural
pride.
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In the second case, we can read the functioning of hypo-descent within hip-hop as
the result of the interplay of subcultural and racial politics during the mid to late-80s. Put
simply, for a cultural movement to exist as radical, revolutionary, or even progressive, it
must be positioned against the dominant culture qua status quo; subcultures, by
definition, exist in opposition to the dominant culture. In almost all cases, the new
cultural form defines itself as opposed to the dominant culture, a fact that cuts across
many different planes to include something like race. Whether as a subculture or a
radical movement, as some scholars have argued, hip-hop tends to define itself in a
similarly oppositional manner.
Hip-hop, with its strict adherence to codes of authenticity, tends to eschew any
connection with mainstream or dominant culture. Coupled with the dynamics of racial
politics in the 70s, 80s, and even 90s, when hip-hop was developing, emerging into
mainstream culture, and establishing itself as a significant force within popular culture,
the tendency of essentializing hip-hop as black—via hypo-descent—could help shore up
its identification as oppositional. Though not limited to that time period, whiteness was
very clearly one of the dominant social forces in the cultural sphere. In contrast, AfricanAmericans in the 70s, 80s, and 90s remained fairly marginalized despite concerted efforts
to gain political power, and as a result, came to symbolize exactly what is not-white. By
extension, connecting hip-hop to blackness works as a way of reinforcing the subcultural
and oppositional status of hip-hop.
In both cases, it is not only hypo-descent at work, but also a social order that
establishes whiteness as dominant—the un-marked, naturalized category—and
conversely, establishes blackness as oppositional. Thus hip-hop, at least with regard to
whiteness, is either black culture, or simply culture. What’s more, since the politics of
race within American society has only begun to move beyond the reduction of race to a
black-white binary within the last 10 or so years, it is easy to omit the role of non-black
“minorities.” As a result, discussions of race and culture within the U.S., including those
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on hip-hop, tend to be framed in terms of black and white, meaning that in the discussion
of hip-hop, especially during the time period covered by this dissertation, hip-hop would
have likely been read through this black-white dichotomy. While reading hip-hop
through hypo-descent may shed light on some possible reasons for the articulation of hiphop to blackness, the tendency to discursively construct hip-hop as black through an
extension of one-drop-rule logic also provides a reason to question that articulation and
the essentialist logic that underpins it.
Theoretical and Political Justification
Having now discussed the more historically or discursively grounded reasons for
questioning the articulation of hip-hop as/to black culture, I want to now turn to the more
theoretical and/or overtly political justification of calling this articulation into question.
In many ways, this set of justifications is premised on a critique of essentialism, whether
it be through deterministic or reductionist discourses. While a more protracted discussion
of essentialism and its critique would no doubt prove insightful, I want to limit my
discussion here to the critique of essentialism as it intersects with race and popular
4
culture.
The critique of essentialist formulations of race and popular culture tends to
fall along two lines. First, there is the critique focused on problematizing the politics of
essentializing culture through race. Second, there is the critique focused on the harmful
effect of essentializing race itself. Both are important in questioning the articulation of
hip-hop to blackness since, in effect, this articulation is operating on two levels of
essentialism. On one level, it is essentializing hip-hop culture as a product of blackness.
On the other level, it extends the essentializing moment to assert that it is possible to
identify some kind of essential blackness that can then be the essential element of hip-hop
culture.
4
For more detailed analyses of essentialism and anti-essentialism, see Andrew Sayer,
"Essentialism, Social Constructionism, and Beyond," The Sociological Review 45.3
(1997), Alison Stone, "Essentialism and Anti-Essentialism in Feminist Philosophy,"
Journal of Moral Philosophy 1.2 (2004).
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In most cases, these two lines of critique tend to be woven together, as is the case
with Hall’s argument in his appropriately titled—for my purposes—essay, “What is this
‘black,’ in black popular culture?” He writes:
The essentializing moment is weak because it naturalizes and dehistoricizes
difference, mistaking what is historical and cultural for what is natural, biological,
and genetic. The moment the signifier ‘black’ is torn from its historical, cultural,
and political embedding and lodged in a biologically constituted racial category,
we valorize, by inversion, the very ground of the racism we are trying to
deconstruct. In addition, as always happens when we naturalize historical
categories (think about gender and sexuality), we fix that signifier outside of
history, outside of change, outside of political intervention. And once it is fixed,
we are tempted to use ‘black’ as sufficient in itself to guarantee the progressive
character of the politics we fight under the banner—as if we don’t have any other
politics to argue about except whether something’s black or not. We are tempted
to display that signifier as a device which can purify the impure, bring the
straying brothers and sister who don’t know what they ought to be doing into line,
and police the boundaries—which are of course, political, symbolic and positional
boundaries—as if they were genetic…. as if we can translate from nature to
politics using a racial category to warrant the politics of a cultural text and as a
line against which to measure deviation. (Hall "What Is This 'Black' in Black
Popular Culture?" 472-73)
Hall quite clearly lays out the critique against essentializing culture through a signifier
like blackness. To summarize, essentializing culture as black a) removes it from the
complex dynamic of its context, closing off in the process the political and oppositional
potential of the cultural form, and b) it freezes blackness as a particular signifier, in effect
creating authentic and inauthentic manifestations of blackness that allow for a “policing”
of racial identity: both strands of critique identified above.
To focus on the level of culture first, what Hall is saying is not that we should
ignore race as part of the production of culture, but that labeling something as determined
by race—some racially defined essence—tends to dehistoricize, decontextualize, and
ultimately depoliticize that culture or cultural product. Put differently by Hall, “A
movement beyond this essentialism is not an aesthetic or critical strategy without a
cultural politics, without a marking of difference. It is not simply re-articulation and reappropriation for the sake of it. What it evades is the essentializing of difference into two
mutually opposed either/ors. What is [sic] does is move us into a new kind of cultural
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positionality, a different logic of difference” (Hall "What Is This 'Black' in Black Popular
Culture?" 472).
By defining culture through race, analysis becomes confined to the axis of racial
difference. For both Hall and Grossberg, this limiting effect is particularly problematic
within culture since “The meaning of a cultural symbol is given in part by the social field
into which it is incorporated, the practices with which it articulates and is made to
resonate. What matters is not the intrinsic or historically fixed objects of culture, but the
state of play in cultural relations” (Hall in Grossberg "History, Politics and
Postmodernism: Stuart Hall and Cultural Studies" 157). Culture cannot be reduced to
one determining characteristic, which is what Hall argues inevitably happens when it is
defined in terms of an essential quality. The essentialism of racially defined culture,
since it is based on the essentialism of racial identity itself, further collapses when the
latter is problematized in its own right.
On the level of racial identity, the critique of essentialism tends to focus on the
political or personal effect of this essentialism. As Hall describes it above, essentialism
fixes the boundaries of race, naturalizing some positions and behaviors through
supposedly natural, biological, or intrinsic criteria, and therefore allows for the policing
and exclusion of identity positions that do not fit within those bounds. Often times this
essentializing impulse becomes expressed via “racial authenticity,” where some
manifestations of blackness, for example, are framed as true to or indicative of some
essential quality of blackness and are therefore authentic manifestations of blackness. As
several scholars have argued however, the problem with racial authenticity is that it
inherently includes its opposite, the inauthentic or fake, and thus racial authenticity
almost inevitably comes to serve as a gatekeeping device (hooks Yearning: Race, Gender,
and Cultural Politics 28-29; Johnson 3; Young). In relation to my project and the
articulation of hip-hop to blackness, the danger is then that this turn towards essentialism
qua racial authenticity will ultimately empower some groups as authentically black while
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disempowering others. In the words of E. Patrick Johnson, “when black Americans have
employed the rhetoric of black authenticity, the outcome has often been a political agenda
that has excluded more voices than it has included” (Johnson 3).
In short, questioning the articulation of hip-hop to blackness can be further
justified on the grounds that racial essentialism in popular culture expresses a regressive
politics on the level of both individual and culture. The articulation of hip-hop to
blackness as black popular culture relies upon an essentialist construction of blackness
that reduces black identity to only one authentic expression. The construction of a
monolithic and singular authentic blackness can be debunked simply on the grounds of
the diversity of individual experiences of people within the group constituted as black
(hooks Yearning: Race, Gender, and Cultural Politics 28-29). It can also be debunked
based on the variability of how that authentic blackness is constituted during different
social, cultural, political, and historical moments (Johnson 3). In either case, there is a
clear political motivation to refusing an essentialist definition of racial authenticity since
“the descriptive falsity of essentialism renders it politically oppressive” by privileging
some identities over others and thus “replicating… the very patterns of oppression and
exclusion” that an oppositional politics of race is meant to combat (Stone 140).
Similarly, there is a clear interest in resisting essentialism as it manifests through
racially determined definitions of culture. To recall an earlier quote from Grossberg,
“cultural practices are signifying practices” and therefore their meaning is constituted by
their location within the web of various axes of differentiation and lines of contextual
significance. An essentialism of culture based on race ignores those other axes, falsely
isolating race as the determining or uniquely constitutive factor. To paraphrase an earlier
quote from Hall, in isolating blackness as the signifier of hip-hop, we remove it from
history and thus exclude the possibility of political intervention (Hall "What Is This
'Black' in Black Popular Culture?" 472). Even more importantly for my argument,
however, the reduction of hip-hop to black popular culture asserts a seemingly intrinsic or
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essential racial quality as the definitive quality of hip-hop, thereby obscuring the work of
ideology in constituting how hip-hop is defined; it erases subjective politics with
seemingly objective materiality. As I’ll argue in the next section, the ideology obscured
by the articulation of hip-hop to blackness through rap music culture may in fact reify a
racist white power structure as much as it offers African-Americans an opportunity for
empowerment.
Hip-Hop as Co-Constituted By Whiteness
My purpose in calling the articulation of hip-hop to blackness into question—in
asserting that there is no necessary correspondence between the two—has been to open
up a space where we can begin to examine what ideological work is being done by this
articulation: what is at stake in defining hip-hop as black popular culture? There is
certainly not one single answer to this question, and I have already offered some
suggestions for ways that this articulation may be politically positive or counterhegemonic. In general, this more “positive” line of analysis has already been taken up by
other authors in various forms. This literature tends to read hip-hop as radically
oppositional, where the “unruly” black body of rap disturbs notions of white propriety
(Gray; Saddik); or where the hardcore gangsta “nigga” ruptures the capitalist social order
of white mainstream society though a “home invasion” on the cultural plane (Judy).
Others read hip-hop as a cultural movement with unique and as-of-yet untapped
political power (Kitwana The Hip Hop Generation : Young Blacks and the Crisis in
African American Culture; Pough; Watkins Hip-Hop Matters). Though all valuable in
advancing the emerging field of hip-hop studies, they are nevertheless only partial
readings of the ideology embedded in hip-hop. To begin with, they almost all take as
their starting point the notion that hip-hop is a function of African-American culture, and
as a result, the emphasis is almost always its relationship to African-American culture.
As R.A.T. Judy puts it:
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the predominant thinking about rap is obsessed with the question of its historical
and ideological significance for African American Society, In turning to the
question of significance we are concerned with rap’s significance for. Rap is for
African American society. It is an expression of this society’s utterance. It serves
this society’s purpose: the constitution of subjects of knowledge. This is also a
conservative purpose; it aims at keeping the African American experience through
its conversion into knowledge. Knowledge gives significance to experience; in so
doing it liberates significance from experience. (Judy 107)
Not only is Judy identifying this main strand of analysis, but he’s also echoing my earlier
critique of the decontextualization that happens as the result of essentializing hip-hop
through its articulation to rap music and African-American culture.
The purpose of my analysis diverges from this lineage in two important ways.
First, I am not interested in reading hip-hop as oppositional or counter-hegemonic.
Rather, I’m interested in reading the ways that hip-hop is also a product of hegemonic
ideology. Second, along these lines, I’m concerned with reading hip-hop in relation to
whiteness. There is already sufficient coverage of what hip-hop does or doesn’t say
about African-Americans, and very little about what it says about whiteness and white
mainstream America. These are not discrete relationships of course, but rather they are
dialogic. As such, my analysis will not solely be about what hip-hop says about
whiteness, but about what this in turn says about hip-hop. In doing this, I rely on
previous scholarship about the white mainstream appropriation of “African-American”
cultural forms. While this is useful literature in grounding my analysis, my argument is
largely based on problematizing this very equation of appropriation. I argue that not only
do these understandings of appropriation presuppose a dialectical relationship between
two discrete and opposing groups, but they also presupposes the existence of these
positions prior to the act of appropriation.
In other words, one contention of my project is that hip-hop had to be
rearticulated as black culture before it could be appropriated by mainstream white
society. As a result, we can read the articulation of hip-hop to blackness—and thus both
the representation of hip-hop and the representation of blackness through hip-hop—as coconstituted by whites. Put in more practical terms, the representation of violent,
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homophobic, misogynistic, hyper-masculine blackness that has become synonymous with
hip-hop through its articulation to rap music culture, must be read as constructed for
whites in service of white ideology. Blackness, through hip-hop culture, becomes the
surrogate for expressing, and thereby working to maintain, a dominant social order that
benefits whites.
In locating the site of ideological expression to the cultural body of an Other, this
surrogacy achieves several key things in service of maintaining hegemony. First, it
creates a buffer for the hegemon, allowing for a kind of “plausible deniability” of the
mechanisms that perpetuate ideological domination. Second, the marginalized and
disenfranchised status of the Other drastically limits the possibility of changing either the
representation or the ideology attributed to their social position. Third, it helps to
rationalize the policing of the Other in the name of fairness, equality, and progressive
politics while simultaneously preserving the very social order being condemned in the
body of the Other. In short, the construction of hip-hop as black allows whites to
scapegoat African-American culture as the source of all social ills while enjoying,
benefiting from, and perpetuating the very relations of power they claim to critique.
The Don Imus-Rutgers Basketball controversy is a sterling example of this at
work. During the April 4th, 2007 airing of his syndicated radio show, Imus called the
members of the Rutgers University women’s basketball team “some nappy headed hoes.”
The comment combined an offensive racial epithet referring to African-American hair
with a misogynistic reduction of all women to prostitutes. During the strong backlash
over his comment, Imus and his supporters attempted to defend his use of ‘nappy headed
hoes” by claiming that he was simply repeating terms taken from hip-hop. In this
5
example, we have Imus, a white upper-class Christian heterosexual man, repeating racist
and misogynistic slurs that he then tries to excuse by insisting that he’s simply repeating
5
This is extrapolated from his constant anti-Semitic tirades.
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phrases he’d heard in hip-hop. In other words, a man who is ostensibly at the privileged
end of almost all of the axes of identity in the US, seeks to displace his exercising of that
privilege—in the form of oppressing others—on the very Others he has privilege over. A
similar, if subtler, form of this same relationship between whiteness, power, hip-hop, and
blackness plays out in the more general consumption of hip-hop as well, where white
kids are essentially (literally) creating blackness for consumption in ways that fail to
challenge white male heterosexual privilege.
Racial Appropriation
The idea that racial appropriation is in part reliant on a reinscription of
essentialized notions of race is certainly not new. In particular, two recent essays have
dealt with this kind of racial appropriation as it appears within hip-hop: Rodriquez’
“Color-Blind Ideology and the Cultural Appropriation of Hip-Hop” and Yousman’s
“Blackophilia and Blackophobia: White Youth, the Consumption of Rap Music, and
White Supremacy.” Both essays look at the white appropriation of hip-hop not as
transgressive of race or racism, but as subtle reinscriptions of it. While I agree with the
arguments of both in many ways, they each have some serious limitations for the way
they attempt to explain the white appropriation of hip-hop, most notably, that neither
seems to be able to escape the notion that hip-hop is already black.
In Rodriquez’ essay, the author is attempting to explain how white hip-hop fans
utilize color-blind ideology to rationalize their attendance at hip-hop shows, in particular
shows for (politically) “conscious” hip-hop artists. For Rodriquez, white fans claim to be
color-blind as a way of avoiding their appropriation of an identifiable black cultural
product, while at the same time basing their own “coolness” and degree of transgression
on the understanding of hip-hop as black (Rodriquez 649). In many ways, this argument
is itself a reinscription of hooks “Eating the Other” in relation to hip-hop. In both cases,
the function of consuming black culture for whites seems to be that they believe it
signifies their transcendence of racism, though they still embed this desire within the
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exotic otherness of hip-hop in the form of blackness. I agree with Rodriquez—and
hooks—that the use of color-blind and similarly pseudo-liberal ideologies of race allows
white people to appropriate the blackness in hip-hop culture and, rather than subvert
racist hierarchies, reinscribe them. I also believe he’s correct in identifying the pleasure
that whites get from this appropriation and the ideological effect of this appropriation—
namely that it fails to interrogate race by attempting to ignore its existence—but the essay
nevertheless falls short by relying on the reduction of hip-hop culture to black culture.
6
In fact, his whole argument is based on this unexamined assumption that hip-hop
is black. If Rodriquez pushed his argument a step further to question whether hip-hop
must first be coded as black in order for it’s blackness to be recognized underneath the
patina of color-blind ideology, I believe he could have moved his argument past
identification of a problem and towards suggesting a way of addressing the racism
underneath it. Further, by not questioning the articulation of hip-hop to blackness,
Rodriquez leaves the ideology behind this linkage un-interrogated. In the end, by failing
to call into question the bifurcation of race into white and black, and the assignment of
hip-hop to blackness, Rodriquez too reinscribes the racial hierarchies that he purports to
be critiquing. Put differently, Rodriquez’ critique of color-blind ideology and the
pleasure that white people get in appropriating other cultures is that it is based on the
simultaneous acknowledgement and superficial rejection of difference in favor of a
universalizing sameness that does not exist.
However in reinforcing the essential difference between white and black,
Rodriquez sets up the very polar dialectic that he is also trying to critique. As with
6
Perhaps even more troubling for his own argument against “color-blind ideology,”
Rodriquez fails to even once address the significance of his own racialized body within
the ethnographic process. Whether he is white, black, Latino, or other most certainly
influences how he will be perceived within these interviews and what kinds of answers he
will get from respondents. His failure to address this even once calls the validity of his
results into question and undermines his argument.
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hooks, the Other that must be consumed has to first be recognized as an Other for that
consumption to occur. This is why Rodriquez sees the reinscription of racial hierarchy
beneath the use of color-blind ideology in the case of white hip-hop fans. This needs to
be pushed further, however. The appropriation of culture that Rodriquez describes
requires that the one doing the appropriating be able to identify the appropriated culture
as not their own. If we begin to question the reduction of hip-hop to blackness, then this
undercuts the possibility of appropriation. If hip-hop is recognized as multicultural, for
example, the act of appropriation is radically shifted, and those interested in appropriating
hip-hop are forced to take into account its intersectionality along a variety of axes, some
of which will invariably implicate the identities of those interested in doing the
appropriation.
A more complex and nuanced critique of the white appropriation of hip-hop is
found within Yousman’s essay on blackophilia and blackophobia within hip-hop. In
short, what Yousman argues is that the white appropriation of hip-hop may resemble
blackophilia (the love of blackness), but it is in fact always tied to blackophobia (the fear
of blackness), and this dialectic relationship is implicated in perpetuating white
supremacist values. Through a synthesis of hooks’ “Eating the Other,” Watts’
“spectacular consumption,” and Said’s “Orientalism,” Yousman argues that the white
consumption of black popular cultural products—namely hip-hop—contributes to the
fear that white people have of black people, thus helping reinforce white supremacist
ideology. In the words of Yousman, “White youth obsession with Black culture can be
read as a form of domestic Orientalism, spectacular consumption, or eating the other.
The consequences of White consumption of Black popular culture may thus ultimately be
the reinforcement of White supremacy and the inequities of U.S. society” (Yousman
386).
Additionally, Yousman echoes my claim that whites are most interested in
appropriating the particular articulation of hip-hop that links it to a litany of problematic
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signifiers and regressive socio-political positions (i.e. hyper-masculinity, homophobia,
etc), and in pointing out the resemblance this bears to hegemonic white patriarchal
capitalism. He writes, “young White male fans of rap music are often fans of gangsta
rap, which generally tends to eschew explicit political messages and emphasize violence,
drug abuse, sexism, and irresponsible sexuality, or precisely the same myths about Blacks
that are blatant in far-right rhetoric and coded in conservative and neoliberal messages
about race and public policy” (Yousman 380). In other words, the articulation of
blackness to these problematic representations of hip-hop ultimately locates sexism,
violence, etc within blackness rather than calling attention to the way these are in fact
products of the larger (white) mainstream society.
This calls into question the claim of many hip-hop historians and scholars who
see hip-hop as a potentially radical political force. In trying to explain the white
appropriation of hip-hop, Kitwana—in much the way that Hebdige tried to explain the
relationship of white punks to “black” reggae, as discussed in Chapter 4—claims that hiphop provides white an outlet for their feelings of alienation (Kitwana Why White Kids
Love Hip-Hop 23-24). Thus he sees hip-hop as a potentially progressive force capable of
moving American beyond its old racial politics (Kitwana Why White Kids Love Hip-Hop
xiv-xv). Yet as Yousman points out, even as the white consumption of hip-hop has
increased, there’s been a “continuing manifestation of White youth resistance to
programs such as affirmative action that challenge institutional racism (Lipsitz, 1998;
Tuch, Sigelman, & MacDonald, 1999) and the attraction of small but significant numbers
of White youth to far-right White supremacist groups” (Yousman 370). Contrary to
Kitwana’s claim, there is no evidence that the consumption of hip-hop by whites has lead
to decreased racism, despite the idealism of many hip-hop scholars, critics, and historians
like him. In an attempt to address this problem, Kitwana offers the wholly unconvincing
explanation that it is not a matter of resistance, but a matter of white youth not yet
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realizing that they should stop being racist (Kitwana Why White Kids Love Hip-Hop
104).
Kitwana further argues that analyses like Yousman’s are problematic because
they are based on the “myth” that hip-hop is consumed primarily by whites (Kitwana
Why White Kids Love Hip-Hop 104). In this way, Kitwana attempts to circumvent full
engagement with the implications of Yousman’s argument. Instead, clinging to the ideas
that hip-hop is essentially black, he tries to argue that the myth of hip-hop as consumed
primarily by whites is part of the erasure of blackness occurring within hip-hop’s
commodification and appropriation. The evidence that Kitwana marshals in support of
this is simply the claim that there is a lack of evidence that hip-hop is consumed primarily
by whites—a claim Kitwana puts forth without offering any substantial evidence. In fact,
Kitwana ignores much of the evidence that scholars like Yousman do cite to support their
claim that hip-hop is primarily consumed by a white audience.
Despite the problems with Kitwana’s critique of Yousman, I am not fully satisfied
with the explanation that Yousman offers. First, as with Rodriquez, I don’t think that
Yousman goes far enough in his analysis of appropriation. More specifically, he fails to
see that it is not simple a matter of whites appropriating black culture, but actually whites
creating a black culture to appropriate. As a result, Yousman is not able to fully probe
the ideological significance of this appropriation and thus cannot offer a substantial
7
suggestion for how to intervene. Instead, he seems content to simply show that hip-hop
is part of the changing nature of white supremacy (Yousman 388). In some ways this
limitation is surprising given that he spends several pages critiquing racial essentialism,
instead framing his analysis in terms of hip-hop as racial performance. He writes:
7
Yousman at one point suggests that whites interested in hip-hop need to embrace a
politics of anti-fascism. While this is true, it ignores the very problem he identified
whereby white youth are resisting doing this. As a result, he simply asks people to do the
thing he is critiquing them for not doing.
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focusing in on the White embrace of popular culture created by Black artists
reveals only part of the (his)story and none of the intense contradictions of
America’s obsession with race. White minstrel performers in blackface, for
example, were attempting to contain and soothe their unrelenting fears of Black
males through ridicule, and yet they were also simultaneously acting out their
fascination with Blackness (Lott, 1995). Reconsidering Lott’s proposition from
the perspective of the contemporary era, I argue that White youth adoption of
Black cultural forms in the 21st century is also a performance, one that allows
Whites to contain their fears and animosities toward Blacks through rituals not of
ridicule, as in previous eras, but of adoration. Thus, although the motives behind
the performance may initially appear to be different, the act is still a manifestation
of White supremacy, albeit a White supremacy that is in crisis and disarray, rife
with confusion and contradiction. (Yousman 369)
While this could easily be extended to highlight the non-necessary correspondence
between hip-hop and the particular chain of signifiers linked to blackness via gangsta rap,
he fails to push the argument in that direction. Yousman thus further fails to fully
interrogate the role of white racist ideology in constituting the very objects that it
appropriates.
The quote above also highlights a second, and perhaps larger, problem with
Yousman’s analysis. While he wants to take Lott’s proposition and apply it to a
contemporary cultural object like hip-hop, Yousman ultimately neglects the very
historicity that he is referring to, and that Lott himself made central to his analysis of
blackface. Yousman’s analysis is largely ahistorical, and as a result, fails to really
illuminate the significance of what he’s trying to argue. Whereas Lott is precisely
interested in examining blackface minstrelsy as a manifestation of the racial politics of a
particular time period, placing it in relation to the social, cultural, economic, and political
structures in which is was historically embedded, Yousman’s analysis of hip-hop as neoblackface tends to be general and decontextualized. Though he discusses it in relation to
a few social trends that support his argument, most of his analysis is vague or general.
For example, he notes that part of the white appropriation of hip-hop for white
supremacist ends may be the result of the erosion of white privilege at the turn of the
century, and the feeling of uncertainty that many whites “seem” to feel (Yousman 38182).
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Though Yousman’s argument is very similar to my claim that hip-hop offers
whites a surrogate body on which to play out their privilege at a (politically) safe
distance, his vague historical contextualization limits the effectiveness of his critique.
Thus while Yousman offers a compelling set of claims about the appropriation of hip-hop
that mirror the bulk of my own, I find his theoretical approach insufficient to support the
claim. Instead, I would suggest returning to Lott’s work on 19th century blackface
minstrelsy, and the process of minstrelization, as a starting point for understanding the
construction and appropriation of hip-hop by whites. Doing so not only historicizes this
racial appropriation, but—in following the imperative of articulation theory—it also
offers the opportunity for intervention.
Minstrelization: Black Culture as White Construct
Reading hip-hop through minstrelization is a more productive and, I argue,
accurate way of getting at the particular relations of power and ideology at work within
hip-hop. Whereas the above treatments of racial appropriation retain some notion of
racial essentialism by falling back on the necessity of connecting hip-hop and blackness,
minstrelization describes a more complex relationship of constitution, “acknowledgement
and expropriation” (Lott Love and Theft : Blackface Minstrelsy and the American
Working Class 49). Crude understandings of minstrelization tend to focus almost
exclusively on the white embodiment of blackness—what we might term the
performance of blackface. Examples of this in terms of hip-hop are discussions of
Vanilla Ice and Eminem as white rappers who have tried to perform or embody blackness
as a way of selling hip-hop (Tate 8-9).
While these are certainly instances of minstrelsy, these crude understandings do
not encapsulate minstrelization as a cultural process. I call them crude because, in
latching on to the white performer’s embodiment of blackness as strictly appropriation,
they naturalize the blackness as black culture rather than as constructed culture. When
extended back to the original 19th century context, this crude understanding of
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minstrelization implies that the performances of blackface minstrelsy were in some ways
“authentic” representations of black culture appropriated from black people. As most
scholars of blackface have shown, the representations of blackness within 19th century
minstrelsy were often only tenuously connected to any organic black cultural forms if
connected at all.
A more accurate understanding of minstrelsy would instead recover the centrality
of the construction of blackness for appropriation rather than simply its appropriation. In
this, we could say strict, sense of minstrelization, it describes the process whereby
cultural forms are constituted in the name of the Other by the dominant for their own
consumption and pleasure, frequently as a way of simultaneously policing relations of
power, indulging in otherwise forbidden behaviors, and addressing barely conscious fears
of the Other. In the words of Lott, ““These instances have injected potent fantasies of the
black male body into the white Imaginary—and thence into the culture industry. In thus
giving shape to the white racial unconscious, such homosocial scenarios actually found
the color line even as they witness the latter’s continual transgression” (Lott "White Like
Me: Racial Cross-Dressing and the Construction of American Whiteness" 475).
Minstrelsy was not simply the appropriation of black cultural codes by white
performers, but the construction and performance of an imaginary “blackness” culled
from the racial fantasies of whites. This, again, isn’t to say that these fantasies aren’t
grounded in reality, or that black people and black culture played no part on creating the
black cultural codes represented in minstrelsy, but that, once again, there was no
necessary connection between the performance of blackness within minstrelsy and any
“actual” or “real” black culture. Minstrelization can alternately be understood as the
performance of stereotyped representations or behaviors of a particular marginalized
group, stereotypes that are neither true nor false representations of any “reality.”
Spike Lee’s 2000 film satire Bamboozled contains a clear critique of hip-hop as
neo-minstrelsy. Though largely a secondary thread of the narrative, the film depicts a
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group of men and women known as the Mau Maus—all black save for one “white” man
who claims to be 1/16th black—who seem to embody hip-hop. They dress in
recognizably hip-hop fashion for the time period, use hip-hop inspired vocabularies and
patterns of speech, and most notably, record hip-hop songs; one of the primary Mau
Maus is also played by Mos Def, a well known hip-hop artist turned actor, and several
others are played by slightly lesser know hip-hop artists. While they don’t articulate to
all of signifiers of gangsta rap, they do reproduce many of the stereotypes of rap music,
drinking “da Bomb” malt liquor and carrying guns in emulation of the “commercials” for
da Bomb also embedded in the film. Though the Mau Maus declare themselves as
political activists working against racism and white supremacy, and in particular the New
Millennium Minstrel Show at the heart of the film, they are nevertheless positioned
within the film as yet another manifestation of the modern day blackface minstrelsy they
come to oppose.
By juxtaposing the overt blackface of the show with the Mau Maus hip-hop
infused behavior, the film implicates hip-hop as a covert form of neo-minstrelsy. The
representation of blackness they embody is not “authentic,” but the product of popular
and commercial culture. As Bamboozled helps demonstrate, reading hip-hop through
minstrelization not only accounts for the somewhat contradictory celebration of racial
difference and reinscription of inequality—the love and theft, or the blackophilia and
blackophobia—but it also highlights that the blackness within this cultural equation is
also constructed. By depicting the behaviors of the Mau Maus—behaviors coded to the
articulation of hip-hop and blackness—as emulations of racist commercial culture,
Bamboozled recalls the non-necessary connection of this chain of articulated signifiers.
More importantly, however, we can see how, as minstrelsy, hip-hop is implicated
in a complex ideological process linked to white fantasies of black bodies, white pleasure
in consuming these imaginary representations of blackness, and black complicity in these
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8
representations. What is being consumed is not “authentic” black culture in the form of
hip-hop, but rather a representation of blackness constructed through minstrelization. In
other words, reading hip-hop through minstrelization not only captures the problematic
ideology of white supremacy beneath the appropriation of hip-hop by white audiences, as
contained in Yousman’s conspicuous consumption of the western-Oriental Other, but it
extends that critique to the more general articulation of hip-hop as black. It’s not only a
matter of the problematic relationship held by those whites that do consume hip-hop, but
also a matter of the overall construction of hip-hop as black in order to make that
consumption possible.
The Significance of Hip-Hop as Minstrelsy
Now that I’ve argued for hip-hop as a kind of minstrelsy—via the minstrelization
of hip-hop—I want to go one step further to get at what this means. One of the strengths
of Lott’s particular theorization of minstrelization is that he locates his analysis within the
political, social, and economic context of history, thereby making possible a more
specific intervention in the socio-political field as it relates to hip-hop. Leaving my
theorization of the minstrelization of hip-hop as simply a transhistorical comparison
would be to treat both hip-hop and blackface as ahistorical. Instead, my purpose in
making this comparison (or perhaps an analogy or simile) is to use it precisely to
illuminate the particular historical moment when hip-hop was rearticulated to (black) rap
music culture as hip-hop emerged into mainstream culture. By reading this articulation
8
This is not to suggest that this black complicity is in any ways a simple thing. To begin
with, we can read it as part of the struggle for hegemony, whereby the oppressed
class/group “consents” to the rule of the dominant through a combination of violent
repression and ideological manipulation. However I also don’t mean to suggest that, as
with more classic readings of this hegemonic struggle, black people are “duped” into
consenting to their own oppression. This too is a much more complicated process. We
might instead begin to read this complicity as simply a survival instinct; the recognition
of the difficulty of meaningfully changing their class position—or simply exhaustion
with the struggle—in the face of these ideological and repressive mechanisms of control.
In other words, we could read this “complicity” as a strategic choice on the part of
marginalized people where some position is seen as being better than no position.
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through minstrelization, we see hip-hop as co-constituted by whiteness and white desires.
Through his analysis of blackface minstrelsy Lott refocuses cultural studies analyses of
cultural representation as a means of fleshing out the social forces of power operating
behind them. As he puts it, “where representation once unproblematically seemed to
image forth its referent, we must now think of, say, the blackface mask as less a
repetition of power relations than a signifier for them—a distorted mirror, reflecting
displacements and condensations and discontinuities between which and the social field
there exist lags, unevennesses, multiple determinations” (Lott Love and Theft : Blackface
Minstrelsy and the American Working Class 8). While what follows is far from a
complete socio-cultural history of the moment when hip-hop emerged in mainstream
American culture—and thus its rearticulation as rap music culture—it is nevertheless
important to at least begin illuminating it.
Securing Hegemony Through Minstrelization
One of the primary forces Lott fleshes out in his analysis is the way that, during
the mid-19th century, minstrelsy functioned as a means of preventing transracial
identification of working class blacks and whites. Instead, the racial fear embedded
within minstrelsy ensured that working class whites would continue to identify with
upper class whites, keeping the lower classes divided and thereby maintaining the
hegemonic control of the white upper-class: class division facilitating class conquest.
Writing about the rise in popularity of minstrelsy during the “economic disaster” of the
1840s, with its shift towards “northeastern capitalist consolidation” instead of the older
“apprentice system of labor,” Lott writes, “The minstrel show, as it developed into a
night-long entertainment in its own right, met the [economic] crisis of the early 1840s
with an intensified white egalitarianism that, for all its real instability, buried class
tensions and permitted class alliances along rigidifying racial lines, a vital need in this
period of seeming disintegration” (Lott Love and Theft : Blackface Minstrelsy and the
American Working Class 137-38). Lott, then, sees minstrelsy as part of a mechanism of
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securing hegemonic control for upper class whites by emphasizing race rather than class
conflict. Though early minstrelsy seemed to hold the possibility of at least minimal
cross-racial class solidarity, this potential was gone by the 1840s as the declining
economy cast such solidarity as a threat to hegemonic control.
We might read the state of hip-hop in the mid-1980s in a similar way. Whereas
the failure of civil rights gains to affectively translate into greater economic opportunity
were devastating for African-Americans and other working class communities of color in
the late-60s through early 80s—creating the urban wasteland of the South Bronx that
would be the birthing ground of hip-hop—it was the 1980s and early-1990s that would
see this disaffection spread to white working class communities. This was particularly
true for youth. While post-civil rights youth of color could in some ways mitigate their
dismal economic prospects with the theoretical gains promised by civil right, white youth
could not. In fact, the very gains of blacks and other people of color post-civil right
would likely have been experienced by many working class whites as coming at their
expense. The loss of white privilege felt by many whites at this point translated into a
“sense of uncertainty about their present and future,” leaving them “increasingly afraid
that the day [was] coming when [whites] will have to be accountable” for inhabiting a
privileged place in the unjust social order (Kitwana Why White Kids Love Hip-Hop 35;
Yousman 381-82).
More than simply being a matter of privilege, it was also a matter of the political
economy of class difference. Like the economic instability that marked the rise of
blackface minstrelsy in the 1800s, the rise of hip-hop in the US was marked by a
contracting economy and increased class inequality, largely in the form of drastic
increases in earnings inequality (Levy and Murnane 1341). As Kitwana points out, in the
1980s and 1990s “the middle and working classes faced slimmer prospects that their
parents’ generation had. During this period, wages continued to fall for unskilled
workers, regardless of race, and the ranks of the poor expanded. Meanwhile, the
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superrich got richer” (Kitwana Why White Kids Love Hip-Hop 24). Even more
specifically, “”Between 1980 and 1990, the wealthiest 1 percent saw their incomes rise
by 75 percent, while the income of the bottom 20 percent actually declined. The richest
2.5 million Americans’ combined income nearly equaled that of the 100 million
Americans at the bottom of the pyramid (Meisler, 1990)” (Schiller 308). These
disparities were not just a matter of differences in earnings, but a restructuring of the
American economy that destabilized the position of the working class. During “The long
recessionary cycle that spanned 1975-1989,” Meehan points out, “the Reagan and Bush
administrations’ monetarist policies effectively transferred wealth from the general
population to the elite, promoted the exploration of heavy industrial operations,
discouraged wage increases for worker of middle or lower social status, and encouraged
companies to replace employees with temporary contractees (Bluestone and Harrison
1982)” (Meehan 317). Economic policies instituted by and for elites during the 1980s
trickled down to negatively affect the class position of the working class. In short, the
class context of hip-hop is strikingly similar to that in which minstrelsy was embedded
during the 1830s-40s.
While this similarity is certainly in need of more detailed and prolonged study if it
is to be as comprehensive as Lott’s analysis of minstrelsy, it is nevertheless significant
for beginning to understand the social forces of hegemony that may have been operating
beneath the white consumption of hip-hop. The facts contained within these economic
similarities cannot be read as simply coincidental; the changing economic realities of the
1980s must have had some effect on the way hip-hop was rearticulated and increasingly
consumed by a white audience. As already noted, Kitwana wants to read this economic
downturn as a force of alienation for whites, who then chose to identify with the
oppositional African-American cultural form of hip-hop as a way of combating that
alienation. Yet we also can’t ignore the problem with his argument that he himself raises.
The cross-racial identification of whites with blacks through hip-hop culture should have,
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according to Kitwana, resulted in more than simply the consumption of hip-hop, but also
an increased level of identification with the social and political struggles that working
class whites and many African-Americans had in common if not issues of social justice
more overtly linked to race.
The reality is that, as Kitwana points out via Yousman, whites have in fact
continued to be resistant to such identification (Kitwana Why White Kids Love Hip-Hop
103-04; Yousman 370). This fact cannot be taken as coincidental either. The class
dynamics of the 1980s and the failure of white cross-racial identification to extend
beyond a superficial consumption of “black” culture to any meaningful struggle for social
justice, both seem to reinforce the hegemonic power relations that privileged upper-class
white, heterosexual, protestant men. This must be read as significant, especially given
that the articulation of hip-hop to blackness also carries with it a string of signifiers that
link it to hyper-masculinity, hyper-capitalistic consumption, violence, homophobia, and
misogyny in ways that similarly seem to reinforce the dominant hierarchies of social
power. To paraphrase Goldfinger: once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, but three
times is a pattern. While I’ve here tried to illuminate this patterns, I recognize that a
much more sustained treatment of each point of connection is needed in order to more
fully understand its significance.
The Whites in Hip-Hop’s Eyes
In addition to embedding his analysis of minstrelsy within the social, political,
and economic context of the mid-19th century in order to illuminate the social force of
whiteness at work behind this cultural form, Lott uses Lacanian psychoanalytic theory to
extend his analysis to whiteness itself. As an earlier quote of Lott suggests, blackface
served as a “distorted mirror” through which social forces were made sense of, and thus
we can read the relations of power that formed it via this reflection. As a mirror, then,
what the minstrelization of hip-hop reflects is the same complex nexus of power relations
that produced it, namely, whiteness. To paraphrase Lott again, the contradictory
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reification and trespassing of racial boundaries is indicative of the character of American
whiteness (Lott "White Like Me: Racial Cross-Dressing and the Construction of
American Whiteness" 476). In other words, we can read the particular articulation of
hip-hop and blackness as signifiers for whiteness; meaning we can, in effect, reverse
engineer whiteness using the articulation of blackness and hip-hop that this white social
order helps constitute. What a reading of hip-hop as minstrelsy can help reveal, “are the
contours of straight Caucasian maleness” (Lott "White Like Me: Racial Cross-Dressing
and the Construction of American Whiteness" 476).
If hip-hop represents the fantasies of whites, then what does this whiteness doing
the fantasizing look like? While a comprehensive treatment of this is beyond the scope of
this dissertation, I do want to sketch, if in broad strokes, the reflection of whiteness in the
1980s contained within this articulation of hip-hop. Within his analysis of blackface,
Lott explains it to psychoanalytic terms:
Whites’ own “innermost relationship with enjoyment,” writes Slavoy Zizek, is
expressed in their fascination with the Other; it is through this very displacement
that desire is constituted. Because one is so ambivalent about and represses one’s
own pleasure, one imagines the Other to have stolen it or taken it away, and
“fantasies about the Other’s special, excessive enjoyment” allow that pleasure to
return. Whites get satisfaction in supposing the “racial” Other enjoys in ways
unavailable to them—through exotic food, strange and noisy music, outlandish
bodily exhibitions, or unremitting sexual appetite. And yet at the same time,
because the Other personifies their inner divisions, hatred of their own excess of
enjoyment necessitates hatred of the Other. Ascribing this excess to the
“degraded” blackface Other, and indulging it—by imagining, incorporating, or
impersonating the Other—workingmen confronting the demand to be
“respectable” might at once take their enjoyment and disavow it. (Lott Love and
Theft : Blackface Minstrelsy and the American Working Class 148)
Whites displace their forbidden desires on the bodies of blacks so that they may
simultaneously condemn them for those desires while appropriating the forbidden
behaviors through the consumption of the same condemned black bodies. While Lott
sees this as a matter of forbidden pleasure in blackface minstrelsy—pleasures that are
deemed inappropriate within the bounds of “respectable” society—I read this as also
partly a matter of forbidden privilege in the case of hip-hop.
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As already noted above, the 80s were marked by the (perceived if not always
actual) loss of white male privilege. Second-wave feminism, multiculturalism, and gay
and lesbian rights were all seeking a fundamental restructuring of the socio-political
landscape. The result was a growing critique of white male privilege that linked white
males to inequality and oppression operating along a number of different axes of
identification and differentiation. Blackness, through hip-hop, became the Other onto
which whiteness could displace the forbidden pleasure of privilege while simultaneously
disavowing it. In the words of hooks, “the sexist, misogynist, patriarchal ways of
thinking and behaving that are glorified in gangsta rap are a reflection of the prevailing
values in our society, values created and sustained by white supremacist capitalist
patriarchy” (hooks Outlaw Cultures: Resisting Representation 116).
Put simply, the misogyny, homophobia, violence, hyper-masculinity, and
extreme-capitalism that hip-hop—and by extension blacks—are often critiqued for are in
fact characteristics of whiteness. Through the co-constitution of hip-hop by whites, hiphop became the imaginary ground on which whites could continue to perpetuate these
social inequalities while avoiding culpability. What’s more, as I’ve already suggested, by
locating the perpetuation of these inequalities within the socio-cultural and physical
bodies of a largely disenfranchised black Other, whites both further legitimated the
policing of blacks in the name of faux-social equality, and drastically decreased the
chance of meaningful intervention in the social, political, economic, or cultural field.
Conclusion
In this final chapter, I’ve used a sustained application of articulation theory to
argue that the rearticulation of hip-hop as a set of cultural practices into hip-hop as rap
music culture was affected through a process of ideology. More to the point, by calling
into question the dominant articulation of hip-hop to black culture—an articulation I
show was partly the function of the rearticulation of hip-hop as rap music culture—I open
up a space to question what is at stake when hip-hop is defined as black; I question why
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hip-hop is articulated to blackness—particularly a misogynistic, homophobic, violent,
hyper-masculine form of blackness—and at what cost. It is only when hip-hop is no
longer framed as essentially black that the social forces of ideology behind this
connection can be revealed. What I argue in this chapter is that, once the obscuring
naturalization of hip-hop as the product of blackness is discarded, we can read hip-hop as
partly co-constituted by the whites that consume it and, by extension whiteness. Again,
to be clear, I don’t purport to be talking about whether hip-hop is “actually” black, but
about the way hip-hop is discursively and culturally defined—how hip-hop comes to be
articulated in the particular way it is articulated within a particular set of social, cultural,
economic, political, and historical circumstances.
Ultimately, what I argue is that, rather that reading the relationship of whites and
blacks via hip-hop as simply one of racially inflected cultural appropriation, we have to
read this as an example of minstrelization much in the way that Eric Lott reads blackface
minstrelsy in the 19th century. In other words, hip-hop is partly co-constituted by whites
prior to their own act of appropriation, and that this transaction is embedded in ideology.
Most importantly then, we see that hip-hop is both the product of ideological forces
working to maintain upper-middle class white male privilege in the face of potential
transracial class alliances, as well as serving as a mechanism through which white males
were able to perpetuate their hegemony by displacing and then reappropriating that
privilege onto the body of a disenfranchised Other.
Also following Lott, we can use psychoanalytic theory to read the articulation of
hip-hop constituted by whites as a dream—reminiscent of how, as I discussed in Chapter
2, Kracauer read film and filmic representations as wish-fulfillment. In analyzing the
desires embedded in the dream, we can arrive at a picture of the dreamer. In this chapter,
and for my purposes, this has meant beginning to paint a picture of whiteness and the
white consumers of hip-hop in the 1980s, showing that the misogyny, homophobia,
hyper-capitalist consumption, and hyper-masculine blackness are all functions of
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whiteness and white hegemonic ideology. Thus, in this way, I try to offer a moment for
critical intervention—in accordance with Hall’s formulation of articulation theory—
within the study of hip-hop, asking scholars to question the ideology underneath the way
they construct hip-hop.
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CHAPTER 7:
CONCLUSION
In this dissertation, I have examined the articulation of hip-hop in the mid-1980s
as it emerged onto the national stage of American popular culture. Through the six
chapters forming the body of this project, I have attempted to weave together an
argument explaining how and why hip-hop went from being articulated as a set of multicultural and inclusive practices, organized around breaking, graffiti, and DJing, to being
articulated to violence, misogyny, homophobia, hyper-masculinity, and blackness as
essentially rap music culture. In doing so I have also argued that there are real sociopolitical and ideological implications to this shift in articulation; that something is at
stake in defining hip-hop as both black and rap music culture. I have put forward this
argument by making three distinct steps over the course of this dissertation. First, I
identified a change in how hip-hop was represented and thus articulated in popular media.
Next I set forth one possible reason for this shift within the limiting conditions set by the
available media technologies and means of commodification as they related to each
articulation of hip-hop. Finally, I both introduced a second, racial and cultural reason for
this shift in articulation, and began identifying some of the significance of this shift.
Chapter 2 focused on an intertextual reading of the hip-hopsploitation films,
arguing for them as a genre, and showing that they represent an early articulation of hiphop to breaking, graffiti, and DJing rather than rapping. Along with this difference in the
defining elements of hip-hop are two distinct strings of additional signifiers connected to
each definition by articulation. The articulation of hip-hop represented in the hiphopsploitation films treats the burgeoning subculture as multi-cultural, multi-ethnic, and
often time more inclusive of women and sexual minorities—something I explore in more
detail in the Chapter 3 case study of representations of race, gender, sexuality, and class
in Beat Street. In contrast, the articulation that takes shape at the end of the hip-
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hopsploitation film cycle and comes to be dominant by the end of the 80s, links hip-hop
as rap music culture to blackness and a string of problematic signifiers and regressive
socio-political positions. The full extent of this later articulation is most evident in the
form of “gangsta” rap, the sub-genre of hip-hop that became dominant in the early-90s.
In some ways, the mere existence of this earlier articulation is enough to suggest
that the still current dominance of the later articulation of hip-hop as rap music is in fact
constructed. Just as the existence of different and often contradictory gender roles
throughout distinct cultural and historical contexts points to the instability rather than
naturalization of gender, the existence of an alternative articulation of hip-hop suggest the
instability of the current narrative of hip-hop as rap music evolved from black culture.
As important as the existence of the earlier articulation is its failure: the shift from one
articulation to the other. As Spigel noted in her study of the “domestication” of
television, popular cultural representations can give us a sense of how people might have
made sense of a new cultural product. Similarly, drawing on Clark’s theories on
exploitation film genre, the hip-hopsploitation films may provide an especially
illuminating look at the way society was trying to make sense of the newly emerging hiphop culture. Chapters 2 and 3 thus set up a discussion for why this earlier articulation of
hip-hop may have failed, as well as what that failure means.
In Chapters 4 and 5 I offer the material conditions of media technology as one
possible explanation for the shift away from an articulation of hip-hop as a set of cultural
practices, and its replacement with the articulation of hip-hop as rap music culture.
Drawing on theories from so-called technological determinist thinkers like McLuhan,
Innis, and Kittler, as well as political economic data about the sales of home audio and
video technologies, I show that medial qualities of the elements central to each
articulation and the available media technological means of commodifying hip-hop
limited the conditions of possibility for which version of hip-hop would become
dominant within mainstream American society. In Chapter 4 I begin by theorizing hip-
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hop and its constitutive elements as media, making it possible to read hip-hop through
techno-deterministic scholarship. As oral/tribal “media” with a temporal bias, breaking,
graffiti, and party-DJing—those elements at the center of the earlier articulation of hiphop as a set of cultural practices—were not only less compatible with the structure of
American mainstream society, but they also required visual or tactile media as modes of
commodification. In contrast, as a written/linear “medium” with a spatial bias, rapping
was more suited to American society, and only required an aural medium for
commodification.
I extend this argument in Chapter 5, showing that the relatively prohibitive cost of
visually commodifiable media like the VCRs, coupled with their low-market saturation
during the mid to late-80s, limited the possibility for the dominance of an articulation of
hip-hop tied to visual media. Since audio technologies like the record, tape, and CD
player were less expensive and—due in no small part to the already established place of
record players in the home—held a much higher average rate of market saturation. Thus
an aural medium like rap music held a privileged place in the commodification of hiphop, and expanding the conditions of possibility for the articulation of hip-hop to rap
music to gain dominance.
As with the first two chapters, Chapters 4 and 5 also implicate the dominance of
the articulation of hip-hop as rap music culture and corroborate my overarching argument
that hip-hop is an unstable term. It does this in two ways. First, as with Chapters 2 and
3, it verifies the existence of this shift and in so doing, implicitly argues that the
dominance of the articulation of hip-hop to rap music is not given but contingent.
Second, by offering a potential explanation for this shift in the form of material
conditions and media technologies, it undermines the notion that the shift is part of the
natural and internally constituted evolution of hip-hop culture. Whereas some scholars
like Boyd would like to argue that hip-hop is a uniquely consistent and intact black
cultural product where, for the first time, black culture did not have to bend itself to fit
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white culture and instead white culture changed itself to fit black culture (Boyd 45-46),
1
the evidence presented in this section of the dissertation suggests otherwise. The
evolution of hip-hop culture to its current dominant form was neither a smooth
progression nor solely the organic product of black culture, but rather, partly the product
of the material and medial conditions of that particular moment.
Yet why then, if there exists enough evidence to see that the dominant definition
of hip-hop as rap music is constructed, is there still an insistence that it is not? What is at
stake in maintaining the dominance and naturalness of this articulation? In Chapter 6, I
use a more sustained application of articulation theory to not only reinforce that hip-hop
is constructed and contingent, but to also show that one of the key aspects within the
dominance of the articulation of hip-hop as rap music is the further connection of hip-hop
to blackness. Thus I identify one thing at stake in insisting on the coherency and
dominance of hip-hop as rap music is the notion of hip-hop as essentially black. While
there are no doubt many possible reasons for maintaining the primacy of this articulation
1
As Boyd writes: “Unlike in the past, hip hop did not sell out or change itself to become
popular, the mainstream changed so as to accommodate the music . . .. the music
remained hard-core, yet the public became fascinated with this sensibility and took it
from there. The old way of thinking says that in order to be popular, one has to sell out.
What underlies this is a sentiment that assumes that mainstream White society is not
interested in Black culture and that the music industry is interested only to the extent that
it can exploit a particular image for profit. It has also been long held as a belief that in
order for a Black person to make it in White society he or she must compromise himself
or herself and fit into an acceptable nonthreatening image that reaffirms the dominance of
the mainstream as opposed to exerting any distinct progressive Black identity.” Though
this is clearly not the place to develop such a counter-argument, one might also employ
Darwinian natural selection as an analogy, pointing out that while a compromise may not
be made at the level of the individual, the dominant forces in which the commodification
of hip-hop is embedded, in this case white mainstream society, will “select” for those
qualities that best fit its needs. Thus, while no individual entity changes, the overall
species evolves. In other words, while black culture/rap may not have “sold-out,” white
consumers may have favored particular kinds of rap for consumption leading to the
solidification of a particular kind of rap music as a stand in for all rap music (gangsta
rap).
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that empower segments of African-American society (most notably young black males), I
argue that there is also a reason for this that maintains white male hegemony.
Rather than seeing the consumption of hip-hop by whites as simply an act of
racial/cultural appropriation, I read the blackness—in the form of hip-hop as rap music—
being appropriated by whites as also co-constituted by whites prior to and in service of
their act of appropriation; hip-hop is articulated as rap music culture through and in
service of white male patriarchal and capitalistic ideology. Put differently, whites help
create the particular form of blackness they consume through hip-hop in a process of
minstrelization much like the one Lott describes in his work on 19th century blackface. In
doing so, whites imbue blackness with a set of characteristic (further articulations) like
misogyny, homophobia, violence, hyper-capitalism and hyper-masculinity.
By displacing these characteristics onto a surrogate black body, white
heterosexual males accomplishe several things that maintain their hegemony. First, they
are able to disidentify from and repudiate these qualities. Second, as a result they are also
able to rationalize the further policing of these black bodies under the pretense of fighting
against homophobia, misogyny, violence, etc. Third, by dislocating these qualities onto
the body of a politically and socio-economically disenfranchised black Other, white
males affectively hamstring any chance at intervening in or challenging this hegemony.
Fourth, by locating all of this within the plane of culture—culture which they can
commodify and consume—white males also make it possible for them to re-appropriate
all of these behaviors and qualities as positions of privilege, and of course make a profit
in the process. What’s more, they can do this while maintaining enough plausible
2
deniability to escape culpability for exercising that privilege. Finally, this helps to
2
As in, “hey, don’t hate the player, hate the game;” or “I didn’t set the rules man;” or
“It’s not me, I’m just repeating what I heard on the latest rap album;” or, as in the case of
the white male hipster use of “nigger/nigga” or “bitch/ho,” the notion that this word is
being used “ironically,” “self-consciously,” or as a way of pointing to the “absurdity” of
these words (when used by others of course) in a moment of supposed “cross-racial” or
“cross-gender” identification that belies the transgressive pleasure of using such
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maintain the hegemony of upper-class whites by sowing cross-class solidarity and transracial tension when the particular economic conditions could have encouraged transracial class solidarity and cross-class conflict.
In this way, by pulling each of these three primary threads together, I answer all
of the research questions outlined in the introduction. In summation, the articulation of
hip-hop shifted from being understood as a set of (gender inclusive, multi-ethnic, and
multi-) cultural practices cohering around breaking, graffiti, and DJing and towards a
definition as rap music culture at the time of hip-hop’s emergence in mainstream society.
This shift was partly connected to the material and medial qualities of hip-hop and its
elements as well as the media technologies available for cultural commodification. This
shift was also partly the function of the particular relations of power embedded in the
different articulations of hip-hop, and the way that hip-hop as rap music and rap music as
black functioned to maintain the hegemony of upper-class white heterosexual males from
challenges by either blacks or lower/working-class whites.
Implications of Research
My research into the articulation of hip-hop has several important implications,
some negative and some positive. Before going any further, though, I want to make clear
my purpose in questioning the articulation of hip-hop and blackness, or more accurately,
of showing that there is no-necessary correspondence between the two—the end point of
my dissertation. In the process, I hope to begin addressing some of the implications of
this argument as well. First, I feel it necessary to once more repeat that this project does
not purport to be revealing the “real,” “authentic,” or “actual” hip-hop, but is instead
discussing the cultural construction of hip-hop: the way hip-hop gets constructed and
terminology, or even the acknowledgement of power that comes from referencing, and
discursively reifying, the inequality of others and his own privilege.
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discursively defined by mainstream culture often through the media and other popular
culture arenas.
Second, I am not arguing that we should evacuate race from hip-hop, or read it as
“beyond” race. By emphasizing the non-necessary correspondence between hip-hop and
blackness, I am not positing a necessary non-correspondence. I’m simply stating that
there is nothing essential about the connection between hip-hop and blackness, and that
this connection comes about as the result of ideology—in particular, a white racist
ideology resembling a kind of neo-minstrelsy. In fact, rather than arguing for the
evacuation of race—a form of the color-blind ideology Rodriquez mentions—I’m trying
to open space for the development of a more complex analysis of how race functions
within hip-hop in relation to power, ideology, and a whole web of other axes of identity
and difference.
Connected to this, I want to address one implication of my dissertation: the danger
that it could reinscribe rather than demystify many of the relations of power that I am
attempting to critique. To begin with, I do not identify as African-American, and while I
don’t identify as white either, my brown skin is light enough that I often pass for white.
Given my high level of educational achievement and its attendant class status, this means
I tend to live the vast majority of my life within the circle of white privilege—and I
should add, heterosexual, male, and American privilege as well. As a result of this, there
is the very real possibility that this project will operate in ways that perpetuate the
colonization of marginalized or disenfranchised groups despite my best intentions. Put
more directly, it’s possible that I am eating the Other, appropriating hip-hop for my own
use as an academic—albeit one that feels like more than simply an academic connection
to hip-hop. Along these lines it’s also possible that, despite my intentions, others might
use the argument I make here in ways that marginalize, colonize, or disenfranchise. That
they may read the non-necessary correspondence as license to ignore race altogether.
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Though there is little I can do to prevent others from misappropriating my
argument, in stating my concerns outright, I hope to avoid as much as possible the
tendency for this project to be misread in any of the above described ways, and/or to reify
unequal and unjust relations of power. In the case of the latter, if avoiding it is
impossible, I at least hope to acknowledge and call attention to it—to demystify the way
my own analysis may fold in on itself. This degree of transparency is important if this
work is to productively enter into the conversation already underway over race and hiphop. In more methodological, if no less political, terms, “[this] means holding enough
ground to be able to think a position but always putting it in a way which has a horizon
toward open-ended theorization” (Hall in Grossberg "On Postmodernism and
Articulation: An Interview with Stuart Hall" 150). In other words, while the act of
writing a dissertation has necessitated a certain degree of theoretical or rhetorical closure,
I hope that this does not come at the expense of future critique. To reiterate Hall’s much
more eloquent phrasing, “I am not interested in Theory, I am interested in going on
theorizing” (Hall in Grossberg "On Postmodernism and Articulation: An Interview with
Stuart Hall" 150).
Of course there are also some positive implications for the argument being made
in this dissertation. For example, by calling attention to the articulated nature of hip-hop,
and the non-connection of hip-hop to rap music and blackness, I more clearly reveal that
hip-hop is constructed within ideology. This, at base, is the intervention I have tried to
make with this dissertation. I am asking scholars and historians of hip-hop—especially
those interested in locating themselves within the emerging field of hip-hop studies—and
anyone else involved in the discursive constitution of hip-hop, including hip-hop artists
themselves, to consider the way that they are always involved in the process of
articulating hip-hop. Further, in making this recognition, they should also continually
work both to identify the practices, positions, and ideologies that become privileged as a
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result of their involvement in this articulation, and to make further interventions where
necessary in the furtherance of social justice.
Thus, by revealing how hip-hop is articulated, I also make possible the rephrasing
of critiques of hip-hop to include this ideology and the way that the construction of hiphop is also implicated in maintaining the very white male privilege it is often thought to
be opposing. It is only through identifying the complexity of the relations of power and
ideology operating within hip-hop that there is any hope of intervening to work towards
social justice. Though this dissertation has started to lay the foundation for such an
intervention, it ultimately will require a new theorization of hip-hop—something I will
sketch further shortly as a possible future direction of research.
Potential Limitations of Research
Despite the radical potential I believe this text has for making a critical
intervention in the study of hip-hop, my project also has some limitations. To begin with,
my analysis of the hip-hopsploitation film genre only offers one particular, and somewhat
limited, set of texts through which to read the articulation of hip-hop during the mid1980s. I have tried to address this issue within the text through my use of Spigel and
Clark, arguing that these texts not only give us a picture of how American’s may have
been making sense of hip-hop as it emerged into the mainstream, but that the hiphopsploitation films are especially useful in this regard since, as an exploitation genre,
they are uniquely suited to helping the public make sense of new and anxiety provoking
issues. That said, a more comprehensive look at the treatment of hip-hop in the media
between 1982 and 1987 would certainly deepen the analysis. Such a study would have to
include not only the coverage of the hip-hopsploitation films in the press, but also the
coverage of hip-hop and its constitutive elements in the press, as well as television
commercials and shows, and more minor cameos across media.
My choice to utilize so-called techno-determinist scholars may also be subject to
critique. On the one hand, some may question my use of techno-determinist scholars to
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in the first place, let alone my attempt to revise them to use with a cultural form like hiphop. On the other hand, some may not question this use of theory out of hand, but feel
that this use is occasionally forced. As already noted, I believe this section is important
for the way it both reinforces the non-necessary correspondence of how hip-hop is
articulated and offers the materiality of media technology as once cause of the shift in
that articulation. Though it would likely be possible to make some of this argument
without doing so, I’ve chosen to use techno-determinist theories to develop this point for
two reasons. First, I believe that, as a distinct theoretical approach, techno-determinism
offers a unique and new lens through which to examine hip-hop culture and its
constitutive elements. Through McLuhan, Innis, Kittler and others, I highlight different
structural, or medial, aspects of hip-hop than would otherwise be emphasized within an
analysis.
Second, I have chosen to apply technological deterministic theories to hip-hop as
a means of attempting to recuperate these same theories within the field of
communication and media studies. While media studies in particular is founded on the
conviction that media technologies play a central role in every aspect of human life and
society, the many theories and theoretical approaches remain stigmatized. None more so
than “techno-determinism.” When framed as a critique, technological determinism can
amount to a scholarly death sentence (as can any form of “determinism”). Yet it is
precisely the voracity with which technological determinism seems to be attacked—or
used as an attack—that necessitates taking a closer look at it. In some ways, this is the
very premise of the dissertation when it comes to hip-hop—in both cases, it’s a matter of
questioning the established narratives and lines of critique in order to understand what
forces are operating beneath them (ideology perhaps?).
Thus, in choosing to utilize techno-determinist scholars like McLuhan, Innis, and
Kittler, I have attempted to ease, if perhaps only a little, the crushing force of stigma with
regard to the theory and its theorists. Even if my application of techno-determinism is
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imperfect in places, or fails to recuperate the theories or reveal a wealth of new
information—though I clearly disagree with this—then I can at least take comfort in the
fact that I offer here an example of a theoretical approach not to take with hip-hop. As
Larry Grossberg once told me in regards to dissertation, sometimes it’s just as important
to try one thing and fail as to try another and succeed.
3
Finally, my analysis of the political economy of media technologies has been
somewhat limited in its focus on the VCR/home video and record player/home audio. To
begin with, a more thorough analysis would have looked at all home audio and home
video technologies, and the political economy of their manufacture and consumption. It
would also have attempted to connect the more general analysis of these technologies
with the particular relevant products of hip-hop. More specifically, it would have
connected to the rap music industry in the case of home audio, analyzing both for any
trends of convergence or relevancy (i.e. how sales of home audio technology and its
market saturation intersected with sales of hip-hop albums). To some degree, this is not
only a limitation of my dissertation, but a limitation of the available data. Most figures
covering the sale of technology is either proprietary or aggregated, the exception being
some census data that is difficult to interpret because of the continual change in reporting
structure—itself most likely partly the function of the rapid change in available
technologies and what they are called.
This is also true of data covering recorded music sales (not to mention, as some
have argued, the fact that many transactions that occur within hip-hop are “under-thetable” and thus virtually untraceable with any real degree of certainty). Prior to the 1991
introduction of Soundscan, music data were handled by Billboard, which compiled its
figures through music store self-reporting, which was open to manipulation and
3
Paraphrased from a conversation over lunch on April 8, 2008 at the University of Iowa,
Iowa City, IA, during which Grossberg discussed his own dissertation.
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unreliable. Even Soundscan required that stores enroll, and thus it was never a full
indication of music sales. In addition, data on music sales was often categorized in ways
that obscured hip-hop sales by collapsing it together with other genres.
Along similar lines, a more comprehensive look at the political economy of home
video would account for the particular ways the emergence of hip-hopsploitation
connected with home video. Cannon Group, which was responsible for producing three
of the hip-hopsploitation films, like most independent studios in the early to mid-80s, was
operating on a business model that relied on home video sales. Not only would it thus be
important to take into account trends in sales or rentals of videos as they intersect with
the production of the hip-hopsploitation films, but it would be necessary to more closely
analyze the political economy of the hip-hopsploitation films as well. For example, an
analysis of the Cannon Group films, would both shed light on the particular exploitation
production model employed in producing these films, but also the relationship this had to
distribution and sales at the studio or industry level. It might also be informative to
examine the political economy of the hip-hopsploitation soundtrack, since many of the
films have become known more for their music than the films themselves. As much as
these may be limitations within this study, they may be possible opportunities for future
research as well.
Suggestions for Future Direction of Research
In discussing some of the limitations of my research, I’ve already begun to sketch
out a couple areas for possible future research; namely, ways of rounding out or
deepening my analysis. In particular, I’ve suggested several areas for expanding my
analysis of the hip-hopsploitation films and their political economy. Leaving aside the
material or political economic, there are also several possible avenues for future research
anchored more within the realm of the cultural. Having called into question the
articulation of hip-hop to rap music and blackness, my dissertation has opened up a space
to examine what is at stake in this articulation. While I began to do this by examining the
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ideology behind this articulation and what in turn tells us about whiteness in Chapter 6, it
is far from a complete picture. I would suggest, in following more closely with the
example set forth by Lott’s examination of blackface minstrelsy in the 19th century, that
future research into the articulation of hip-hop in the 1980s work to more fully locate the
ideology underneath this articulation within the particular time.
While I sketched some of the political, economic, and social context in which hiphop was embedded as it shifted from being articulated to breaking, graffiti, and DJing as
a set of (multi)cultural practices, to being articulated to MCing and blackness in the form
of rap music culture, a more substantial cultural history of this shift is in order. Also
necessary would be a deeper examination of the pattern of social, political, economic, and
cultural forces revealed by a more comprehensive cultural history. I think one
particularly fruitful avenue of research would be to use such an analysis to more clearly
implicate the particular structures of power—in the form of white male heterosexual
privilege—also at work in this articulation.
A final area for possible future research that I would like to suggest is the
extension of my intervention to the level of a re-theorized hip-hop. One recommended
avenue would be to use theories of intersectionality to suggest a new definition of hiphop centered on place rather than race. Instead of defining hip-hop as African-American
culture—thereby allowing the perpetuation of racist-white fantasies of cultural and racial
authenticity, the body, and coolness—I would recommend theorizing a new definition of
hip-hop as a product of the poly-ethnic urban wasteland of the Bronx. In some ways,
several scholars have already lain the groundwork for such a move—for example Rose,
Forman, and Chang—but not in such a way that replaces blackness with place as the
central logic of hip-hop.
Creating such a theory of hip-hop would entail drawing from post-colonial theory,
Diaspora studies, and critical geography, in addition to a theory of “sampling” contained
in hip-hop itself. It would reformulate place as the nexus for numerous intersecting axes
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of stratification and identity, including class, gender, and nationality. Consequently, race
would become one of many defining influences for hip-hop rather then the determining
one. This reformulation would thus allow for an even clearer picture of the way power is
inscribed along the above axes, in addition to the opportunity to radically revise them and
redistribute the power. I hope that this dissertation has begun to move the conversations
about the study of hip-hop in this direction and made it more possible to make such a
critical intervention.
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APPENDIX A:
THE HIP-HOPSPLOITATION FILMS
Wild Style
The first hip-hopsploitation film was Wild Style, released in 1982 by
documentary director Charlie Ahearn. Ahearn, himself characterized as “underground”
(George Hip Hop America 13) and “a veteran of the New York avante-garde” (Merritt
303), was working as a documentary filmmaker outside of the studio system when he
made Wild Style contributing to the film’s classification as the only truly “independent”
("Wild Style" 30) film in the hip-hopsploitation cycle. Additionally, the nominal
$250,000 used to make the film was acquired through foreign TV companies, England’s
Channel 4 and Germany’s ZDF (Jacobson 64-66; Jaehne 4), and private funds (Merritt).
When Ahearn first started the project in 1980, he requested the money through PBS,
calling it “an art movie that would play to a ghetto audience” (Merritt 245), However, as
Ahearn describes in an interview, “the US of A was not so interested in it, especially all
the funding services that are normally available to documentary filmmakers . . .. I got a
letter [from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting] with exclamation marks saying ‘So,
the mess on the subway is art!’” (Jacobson 64). Ahearn also collaborated with figures
within the world of hip-hop in making the film. Freddy Braithwaite, aka Fab Five
Freddy, an early graffiti artist, b-boy, and DJ turned entrepreneur and promoter, worked
closely with Ahearn on the film, earning associate producer and music director credits.
Additionally, they worked with “actual street kids as well as an impressive lineup
of rap performers and break-dancers” ("Wild Style" 30). These local graffiti artist, bboys, DJ’s, and MC’s, grounded the film within hip-hop culture more clearly, giving it a
certain feeling of “authenticity” (Jaehne 3) that would not have been achieved with
professional actors. Ahearn describes how this worked:
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As a producer, I chose each character I approached with total faith in that
character’s ability to be interesting in and of itself. I didn’t want to make that
character into something else that would fit into an artificial or preconceived
narrative. I neither glorified not dramatized these people. I tried just to create a
situation where they could perform. (Jaehne 3)
Though Ahearn penned an overall plot, he did not write a script, relying instead on the
characters to play versions of themselves. The main characters in the film were graffiti
writers “Lee” George Quinones, Sandra “Pink” Fabara, and Zephyr, and future MTV VJ
Fab Five Freddy. It also featured cameos from several legendary hip-hop performers,
among them Grandmaster Flash, Grand Wizard Theodore, Chief Rocker Busy Bee, the
Cold Crush Brothers, the Fabulous Five, and the Rock Steady Crew. It is this quality that
makes the film, in the words of Nelson George, “one of the best feature-length film
documents of hip hop” (George Hip Hop America 13) but which leaves the plot rather
thin. While the film was completed in 1982 and enjoyed some limited exposure at the
time, it wasn’t until after the success of breaking in Flashdance in 1983 that the film was
released theatrically (London).
Plot
Wild Style centers on Raymond, a graffiti artist painting secretly under the name
Zoro, and his conflicted relationship with Rose, a fellow graf artist named Ladybug, and
the shifting nature of graffiti culture itself. Rather then join one of the local
commercialized graffiti crews that are being commissioned to pain murals, Raymond
insists on continuing to paint the subway trains. While this decision leaves Raymond
financially and romantically strapped—Rose being a leader of the crew Raymond
rejects—the continued appearance of “burners,” graffiti murals covering entire subway
cars, propels Zoro to legendary status. When Raymond is revealed as Zoro to an old graf
partner turned promoter and a younger contemporary, they encourage him to meet with a
newspaper reporter interested in writing a story about the graffiti scene. She in turn
introduces Raymond to the New York art gallery scene and the world of commercialized
graffiti art. Though Raymond tries to use his new interest in professionalization to help
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reunite with Rose, his continued refusal to include her in his graffiti continue to cause
problems. Ultimately, Raymond abandons the art scene in favor of painting a park
concert shell for a community organized hip-hop show. The film ends when Raymond is
finally able to reconcile his conflicts with Rose and graffiti by confronting and
evacuating his own artistic ego (symbolized by myth of Zoro) in favor of a more
community oriented spirit.
Reception
Wild Style is one of the most discussed of the hip-hopsploitation films in terms of
scholarly and filmic sources, but appeared comparatively little in the press, particularly
the Black press, at the time of its release. Part of this might be due to the limited scope of
its initial release. Greg Merritt in Celluloid Mavericks states that the film was “a
commercial disappointment in most theaters,” yet “a smash hit with young audiences in
New York City, where the film was aided by a street-savvy marketing campaign”
(Merritt 340). One way of interpreting this is that Wild Style would have been successful
with those interested in hip-hop, the urban youth, while flying largely under the radar for
most adults, the people who would have authored any press coverage of the film.
Given the particular dynamics of class in the Black community in relation to the
reception of hip-hop more generally, something I discuss in greater detail in Chapter 5,
it’s also possible to argue that the Black press may have been aware of the film but, given
their resistance to hip-hop, chose not to review it. While definitely a film of interest to
black youth, these would have likely been poor and undereducated residents of the South
Bronx. Despite being popular in some art-house circles, hip-hop had not yet been
embraced by the mainstream, educated, or middle-class Black populations. The black
church might also have had some effect on the reception of hip-hop—especially in its
early years when it had not yet gained much credibility in the eyes of the white press—
and thus influenced the reception of hip-hop film. Given the church’s role in the black
community, it wouldn’t be out of line to suggest that if it didn’t approve of hip-hop, and
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this was at least the case in the late 70’s and early 80’s (George Hip Hop America 28),
than it would not receive favorable treatment in the press. Nevertheless, as plausible as
this may be, it remains conjecture at this point.
Wild Style was covered most by the NY Times, where it was featured in a review
as well as pieces about hip-hop culture more broadly. It was also reviewed in Variety
and the LA Times, and multi-page features in Film Comment, Film Quarterly, and
American Film. In the Black press, the film was covered by the Washington Informer,
the Atlanta Daily World, and the LA Sentinel. For the most part, reviewers tended to like
the film, though they all commented on or critiqued it for its rough style. For some, the
realness and rawness of the film was seen as a positive rather than negative feature
("Ebony Etchings"), though this seemed more likely to be the case within the Black press
than the mainstream press. Film industry sources tended to be more informative than
evaluative, though the Variety review was consistent with the tone of reviews found in
the Black press.
Interestingly, Wild Style is often referenced in reviews of other hip-hopsploitation
films, often serving as a kind of yard stick. As Gene Siskel states in his review of Body
Rock, “the more I see films like ‘Body Rock,’ the more I appreciate the first
breakdancing movie, ‘Wild Style,’ with its gritty, pseeudodocumentary quality” (Siskel
"'Buckarroo Banzai' Funny Ride in Strange Dimension"). The Village Voice reviewers
of Krush Groove begin their review with a comparison to Wild Style that implies that
Wild Style is generally considered “the best of the hiphop flicks” (Christgau and
Dibbell). While earlier reviews of Wild Style tended to critique its rough,
“pseudodocumentary” feel and reliance on non-actors, it appears that in the wake of the
rest of the hip-hopsploitation films, Wild Style was reconfigured as the original,
“authentic” film about hip-hop. This trend may also explain why the film has become the
favorite of scholars discussing film and hip-hop, despite initial reviews that, on average,
were not better than those for the other films in the group.
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Style Wars
Style Wars occupies a unique position within the hip-hopsploitation films. As a
documentary film, rather than a fictional narrative, it does not fit neatly within the genre I
will theorize shortly. This aside, the influence of this film on the others in the genre and
its roll in representing, mediating, and articulating hip-hop make its inclusion in the
chapter necessary. According to Tony Silver, the director and one of the producers, the
film came from his desire to capture the emerging b-boy culture ("Style Wars Dvd Press
Kit" 8). When Silver met his co-producer Henry Chalfant, a well-regarded photographer
of subway graffiti since 1976 ("Style Wars Dvd Press Kit" 10), the two decided to
combine their individual projects into one film. The film has its roots in the work and
experience of both Chalfant and Silver—not to mention the culture of hip-hop itself—
going back to the mid to late-‘70s, however production for the film did not begin until
1982.
Chalfant and Silver initially applied for support from the National Endowment for
the Humanities but the project set-off a “firestorm” at the NEH when its peer review
board recommended the project for funding ("Style Wars Dvd Press Kit" 14). Despite
written support from prominent neo-conservative sociologist Nathan Glazer, a confessed
opponent of graffiti, the funding was vetoed by a senior NEH official ("Style Wars Dvd
Press Kit" 14). Instead, they landed $46,000 from the National Endowment for the Arts
as well as funding from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the New York State
Council for the Humanities, and British TV company Channel Four to provide the
$256,000 needed for the project’s completion (Clarity and Weaver). Though finished in
1983 and entered into the Sundance film festival where it won the 1984 Grand Prize for
Documentaries, it did not officially debut until it was aired on PBS on January 18, 1984
and in the UK on Channel Four.
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Plot
The primary aim of the film was to capture the subway graffiti and breaking
subcultures in New York City at the beginning of the ‘80s. To that end, it contains
interviews with graffiti writers, b-boys, and members of the New York City government
and transit authority as well as a wealth of footage depicting graffiti writing and breaking
in action. As a documentary, Style Wars lacks a plot in the traditional sense, but the film
still contains several narrative threads. One of the most prominent and famous is the
conflict brought about by a graf-writer going by the name Cap, who angers the larger
graf-writing community by refusing to respect the work of other writers. Whereas the
majority of the graf-writers in the film align their desires to be “the best” with the
production of high quality, full car murals called “burners,” Cap seems more intent on
quantity, opting to write his name, called “tagging,” in as many places as possible and
preferably over the work of other writers. The film ends without there having been any
definitive resolution, though Cap, whose identity has been a mystery to the other writers,
reveals his face in the last half of the film, acknowledging in the process his eventual loss
of anonymity with the films release.
More generally, the film attempts to present graffiti in a measured fashion, with
writers identifying their reasons for writing while simultaneously presenting the many
obstacles and conflicts that stand in their way. Another primary thread is the
juxtaposition of the mostly teen and young adult graf-writers, and adult members of the
NYC government, including Mayor Ed Koch, and the transit authority. While the grafwriters clearly invest a lot of meaning into the work they do, seeing it as art, selfexpression, and even politics, the reaction of Koch and representatives of the city is
unmistakably negative. As Koch launches a multi-million dollar anti-graffiti campaign,
including a costly, toxic, and marginally effective paint removal process and tighter
security at the train yards, the graffiti writing community is forced to adapt to the new
challenges. Though never stated outright, the documentary seems to clearly fall on the
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side of the graffiti writers, and the audience is encouraged to view the response by city
officials as extreme.
Reception
It’s difficult to discuss the reception of Style Wars since the film was a
documentary and its release differed substantially from that of the other hiphopsploitation films. Style Wars was seen at film festivals—it won the Grand Prize for
Documentaries at Sundance in 1984—and premiered on public television. The only
record of how the film was received comes from the “Style Wars DVD Press Kit.” As
director Tony Silver recalls, the NYC PBS affiliate ran the documentary once in
accordance with its contractual obligation, but then never ran it again despite the option
of showing it seven more times ("Style Wars Dvd Press Kit" 14). Silver implies that the
reason lay with the controversial status of graffiti in NYC culture. Silver also states that,
“Nationwide ratings, from Boston to San Francisco to Salt Lake City and elsewhere
[were] very strong” ("Style Wars Dvd Press Kit" 14). The Variety review of Style Wars
seems to support Silver’s claim that the film was well received. The review is entirely
positive, though it should also be noted that reviewer viewed the film in Australia at the
Sydney Film Festival. While the reviewer includes a comment indicating a favorable
reaction by the audience, I have no other articles from the area cover any of the other
films with which to compare and validate the audience reaction and thus am hesitant to
rely on the review too much in forming a picture of how the film was received.
Breakin’
Breakin’, along with its sequel and Rappin’, was produced by the independent
studio the Cannon Group Inc., run by two Israeli’s, Menahem Golan and Yorum Globus.
The Cannon Group spent much of the early and mid-80’s in the limelight as one of only a
few independent studios to challenge the “big seven” majors. The secret to their success
was a combination of three business strategies. First, they pre-sold the video, cable, and
theater rights. Second, instead of renting out prints to foreign markets and sharing the
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subsequent profits, they opted for a single flat fee (Friendly 60). Finally, they kept the
production budgets low with an average $5 million budget. The combination of these
factors made the films profitable before they were even released in the American market
(Ansen and Behr 54). Golan and Globus also negotiated distribution rights with
MGM/UA, which distributed all three of the films (Friendly 60). This prosperity didn’t
last long however. By 1986 they were under investigation by the SEC for inflating
earnings, causing their profits to go from $15 million in ’85 to a ’86 third-quarter loss of
$14.6 million (Grover 40). This was in part a short-coming of the Cannon Group’s
business model. As Wasser points out:
pre-selling had a fatal weakness in a maturing market. It split the revenue among
too many subdistributors. The primary distributor /producer did not receive
enough money from even the biggest hits to cover losses on the inevitable flops
and disappointments…. pre-selling was premised on the belief that video and the
new markets would demand more films. It was also an advanced wedge in the
internationalization of the film industry…. In summation, Cannon used home
video money to build a large library, but the long term value of the library was not
adequate to offset operating expenses. (176-77)
The company, along with most of the independent studios, was further damaged by the
stock market crash of October 1987 (Grover and Lieberman 29) and by April of 1988
Cannon had been purchased by the Italian investor Giancarlo Parretti (Collingwood 72).
While the Cannon Group had managed to gain a substantial profit early on by
producing low-budget B movies, Breakin’ was one of its only real box-office successes.
By its third week in the theaters, Breakin’ was second on the Variety “50 Top-Grossing
Films” list with a total of $5, 956,461 ("50 Top-Grossing Films" 9). Out of all of the hiphopsploitation films, Breakin’ was also the most commercially successful (Denisoff and
Romanowski 258). The film went into production in February of 1984 and was released
in 1,121 theaters on May 4, 1984 (BoxOfficeMojo.com "Breakin'"). The quick
production and low budget are indicative of why the production is considered an
exploitation film. Several critical sources referenced Sam Katzman, a 1960’s producer
that “specialized in identifying the latest teenage fad and getting it up on the screen
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practically overnight” ("Breakin'" 526; Denisoff and Romanowski 257), to describe the
production of Breakin’. The Cannon Group brought in a fellow Israeli, Joel Silberg to
direct the film in his American debut ("Breakin'" 526).
4
Plot
Breakin’ revolves around three primary characters: Kelly (played by Lucinda
Dickey), Ozone (played by Adolfo “Shabba-Doo” Quinones), and Turbo (played by
Michael “Boogaloo Shrimp” Chambers). Kelly is a white, classically trained dancer
stuck frustrated by an arrogant dance instructor who makes repeated, and unwanted,
5
sexual advances. Kelly’s gay black friend Adam introduces her to breaking and, in the
process, Ozone and Turbo, an ambiguously Afro-Latino adult and black teen street
dancer respectively. After their meeting, Ozone and Turbo strike up a friendship with
Kelly, their mutual friend Adam serving as the bridge between Kelly’s professional
(white) dance culture and the “street” (black and Latino) dance culture of Ozone and
Turbo. There are early undertones of a romance between Kelly and Ozone, however as
4
Interestingly, the film was originally directed by David Wheeler, but no additional
information is available as to who Wheeler is. The September 3, 1986 issue of Variety
includes this switch in its section entitled “Director Shifts During Filming,” a list that
indicates all of the directorial “changes caused by ‘creative differences,’ firings,
voluntary withdrawal, scheduling conflicts, and illness or death” (p. 82). It would be
informative to know more about Wheeler, including why he left the picture and the
nature of his relationship to the subject matter. Also of interest for this chapter is what
ethnic/racial group Wheeler identified with and how this would affect theorization about
the film.
5
This is a very interesting feature of the film. With the exception of a few other
Blaxploitation films, Sweet Sweetback is one, there are very few depictions of gay men
of color, especially in ways that are not overtly negative. The Variety review entitled
“Breakin’” describes the actor playing Adam as someone “who nicely puts over his
character’s gayness without it being spoken.” The implication is that it is acceptable for
there to be a positive, although highly stereotypical, portrayal of a gay man of color as
long as the issue of homosexuality is never discussed openly. Given the rather rampant
(and unfortunate) homophobia of hip-hop, it is interesting that the filmmakers chose a
gay character as the bridge between the embodiment of white-mainstream culture of
ballet and modern dance and the black/Latino-underground culture of hip-hop and
breakdancing.
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one review stated, the film “shys [sic] away from the possibility of interracial romance so
6
latent in the story” ("Breakin'").
As Kelly joins forces with Ozone and Turbo—both already well-known dancers
at the local hip-hop hang-out, the Radiotron—to form the TKOs and beat their rival crew,
the Electros, Kelly also faces criticism from her former dance teacher and agent who both
see breaking as illegitimate. After the agent witnesses the final triumph of the TKO’s
over the Electros, he’s convinced that this new “street dancing” has mainstream potential.
However when the agent books the TKOs for an audition, Frank, Kelly’s former teacher,
uses his connections to block Kelly, Ozone, and Turbo from performing. The film
climaxes when the TKOs take the stage, ignoring the protests of Frank, who has been all
but assured of winning, and the panel of judges. The TKOs’ amazing “street dancing”
abilities overcome the judges, and the trio wins the audition. The movie’s final sequence
is an excerpt from the succeeding musical, entitled Street Jazz.
Reception
Despite bringing in over $6 million in the first week and $38.6 million overall—
more than the next three combined—Breakin’ was received with mediocre reviews by the
mainstream press, and moderate coverage in the black press. Aside from advertisements
in newspapers like the New York Times, Variety, and Los Angeles Sentinel, only a
handful of papers like The Chicago Defender, Village Voice, and Variety featured critical
6
J. Hoberman in his article “Alphabet Soup” characterizes both Ozone and Turbo as
Latin. While I hesitate to make an assumption of race, it seems safe to say that given the
lack of identifying information in the story itself, as well as the name of the actor, it is
unlikely that Turbo is meant to be anything other than African-American. Ozone on the
other hand is much more ambiguously raced in the film. The actor’s name indicates that
he is Latino or Afro-Latino, and the character is often dressed in what Hoberman
identifies as “pachuco style.” Thus, it would seem safe to assume that Ozone is indeed
meant to be Latino, however since neither character overtly claims a racial identity in the
film, such assumptions are not unproblematic. I will however, continue from this point
on to refer to Ozone as Latino and Turbo and African-American, this footnote is merely
to point out that this is far from a transparent characterization.
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7
engagement with the film. The first article, by an unspecified author, is written prior to
the release of the film. The article is a little disjointed, describing briefly the production
of the film and its actors, and then attempting to explain breakdancing. Two aspect of the
article stand out upon inspection, the first being a series of errors of both a typographical
and informational nature. These errors combine to imply a lack of serious interest on the
part of the anonymous author. First there is a very obvious typo, followed by a
misspelling of one of the actor’s names. Then there is the misuse of several slang words
in what I’d guess is an attempt on the part of the author to appear knowledgeable about
the subject being discussed. The second quality of note is in the use of language to
describe breakdancing in general. On the whole, the article tends to color the author as
unknowledgeable about the subject through the overuse of quoted “insider” terms and
cliché phrases like “razzle-dazzle” and “the break dancer begins swinging and moving to
the beat like a robot on fire” ("'Breakin' to Premiere at the Chicago Theatre").
The second article, by regular film writer Earl Calloway, is written after the
release of the film, however, it does not discuss the movie much itself. Instead, it focuses
on Adolfo “Shabba-Doo” Quinones, who turns out to be a native of the Chicago area.
8
The impetus for the article is a visit to the Defender by Quinones and Chambers, although
it never discusses Chambers. The article does not even highlight Quinones’s role in the
film, but rather his long history of “street dancing” in the Chicago area and his move to
Los Angeles. The last characteristic of the article seems aimed at pushing Quinones
forward as an “authentic” and organically produced b-boy. As Quinones says, “I’ve been
doing this for more than twelve years, myself. I’m not a novice, who just become [sic]
7
This is notable given that the film is set in the Los Angeles area and includes several
features that are presumably more recognizable, if not exclusive, to the Los Angeles hiphop scene, i.e. Radiotraon, a young Ice-T, and poppin’, lockin’, and boogalooing.
8
Interestingly enough, Quinones is the only character not to do more conventional B-boy
moves, sticking mainly to poppin’, lockin’, boogalooing, and other pre-breaking West
Coast styles of up-rocking.
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aware of this dance craze since ‘Flashdance.’” While Quinones was certainly no novice
to dance, his background was as a popper and locker, a member of the early Soul Train
crew the Original Lockers, and not a breaker. Quinones, along with Chambers and at
least two of the dancers playing the Electros in the film, also appeared in Chaka Khan’s
cover of Prince’s “I Feel For You” video, which aired on MTV in June of 1984. While
Nelos George remarks that the blending of “breakin’ by Shabba-Doo and Boogaloo
Shrimp” and “rhymes by Melle Mel” with R&B and fashion is “revolutionary” (George
Post-Soul Nation 90), it’s once again clear from the dancing that Quinones and Chambers
are not breakers, but poppers and lockers.
Beat Street
Beat Street began production in December of 1983 amidst a flurry of media
attention on breaking, including several newspaper articles and the national media
coverage of famed Lincoln Center b-boy battle. While Beat Street went into production
several months prior to Breakin’, it was released on June 8, 1984, a month later than
Breakin’. Although the production value of the film was much higher than that of
Breakin’, reflecting the larger $10 million budget (Calloway "Belafonte Rap on 'Beat
Street'"), Beat Street was unable to reap the same type of success as its predecessor. Beat
Street was also produced by the larger Orion Pictures, a semi-major studio, leading
prominent Village Voice critic J. Hoberman to label it the “first ‘real’ Hollywood movie
about breaking, rapping, scratching and writing” (Hoberman "Their Big Break").
The film was made with African-American talent both in front of and behind the
camera. Harry Belafonte, one of the few African-Americans working within Hollywood
during the civil rights era, produced the film and Stan Lathan, the rare African-American
director working in television in the 70s and 80s (Maslin), directed it, among other
African-Americans involved in the film’s production. The film featured several
prominent hip-hop artists along with its cast of actors, including the Rock Steady Crew,
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the NYC Breakers, Afrika Bambaataa and the Soul Sonic Force, Grand Master Melle Mel
and the Furious Five, and Jazzy Jay.
9
Plot
The film has four primary protagonists, brothers Kenny (Guy Davis) and Lee
(Robert Taylor), their friend Ramon (John Chardiet), and the love interest Tracy (Rae
Dawn Chong). Kenny is an aspiring DJ who wants to move from playing house parties
to clubs. Along the way he meets Tracy, a City College of New York student working on
choreographing a dance performance—presumably as part her thesis—and the two begin
a sort-of romance. Lee, the younger brother, is a B-boy with the Beat Street Breakers,
who are themselves locked into a rivalry with another B-boy crew. Finally, Ramon, aka
“Ramo,” is a graffiti writer who’s trapped between a father who disapproves of what
Ramon sees as his art, the need to provide for his girlfriend, Carmen, and their baby son,
and his own passion for “bombing” trains. Tension further builds when Ramo’s
10
“burners”
are defaced by an unknown graffiti artist going by the tag “Spit.”
These four threads provide a well-rounded picture of hip-hop, covering B-boying,
11
graffiti, DJing and MCing , and are brought together in the final sequence of the film.
Ramo, having finally decided to get a job in order to support his girlfriend and son. sees a
white train, and is tempted into one last trip to the yards. During this late night bombing,
Ramo encounters Spit, a disheveled white graffiti artist. The two fight on the tracks and
9
As Chang writes, “On paper, this was the historical equivalent of landing Louis
Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Billie Holiday, the Nicholas Brothers, Honi Coles, and
Cholly Atkins and Whitey’s International Hoppers for a feature film about jazz” (192).
10
A burner is a larger graffiti painting covering a significant portion of a train, and
generally includes more than simple a rendering of the artist’s name. Contrasted to this
are the “tag,” with is simply the name of the artist written in Sharpee or spray paint, and
the “bomb,” a full subway car mural.
11
Kenny often times raps along with his sets, especially in the final sequence of the film.
Again, in his character, it is easy to see the tendency to collapse DJing and MCing
together.
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before Kenny can intervene, both Ramo and Spit are killed by the third rail. The death of
Ramo brings the remaining characters together for a memorial celebration that features
both of the B-boy crews, Tracy’s dance troupe, as well as a gospel choir, and Grand
Master Melle Mel. The message of the performance is overwhelmingly one of
community unity through hip-hop.
Reception
Beat Street serves as a case study in the following chapter, however it’s important
to note here that among all 11 of the hip-hopsploitation films, Beat Street is unique for
several reasons. First, as noted above, it was one of the few films to have primarily
African-American talent in front of and behind the camera. Second, it was the most
mainstream of the films, not only because it had the largest budget of the films, $10
million, but because it was the only one to be produced by a major studio. Third, the
discourses of authenticity surrounding the film evidence a concerted, if ultimately flawed,
problematic, and ineffectual, effort on the part of the producers to produce a nonexploitative film. And finally, Beat Street found wider acceptance in the press, especially
the black press, than any of the other hip-hopsploitation films, including features in Jet,
the Village Voice, the Chicago Defender, the New York Amsterdam News, and Variety.
Breakin’ 2: Electric Boogaloo
Almost as soon as the first Breakin’ hit screens, Golan and Globus at Cannon
knew it was going to be massively profitable. The low production cost and consequent
high profit margin made a sequel inevitable. Hoping to release the film quickly, Cannon
Group turned to Jan Ventura and Julie Reichert, who had initially submitted a script for
the first Breakin’ that was never used. Golan and Globus also wanted the sequel to be Grated, and in addition to the quick turn around, asked Ventura and Reichert to avoid bad
language, sexuality, and real violence (O'Leary). These constraints on the script and
production are probable factors in the overall low-production value and unrealistic
dialogue. As Reichert mentions in an interview, “We had to start figuring out ways to
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say things that sounded authentic…. We wound up throwing in a line that we were sure
was gonna get changed, which was, ‘What is this baloney?’ And it stayed in” (O'Leary).
Despite their efforts, the film received a PG rating. To round out the production team
Golan and Globus again pulled from within the Jewish community, tapping early Cannon
Group associate Sam Firstenberg as director. Breakin’ 2 went into production on July
19th ("Breakin' Two Is Electric Boogaloo"), just two month after the release of Breakin’.
The film opened in 908 theaters (BoxOfficeMojo.com "Breakin' 2: Electric Boogaloo")
five months later on December 21, 1984.
Plot
Breakin’ 2 was a departure from earlier hip-hopsploitation where the aspects of
hip-hop culture were presented via performances integrated into the narrative, i.e. at
parties, concerts, or clubs, a style resembling concert documentaries more than musicals.
Contrastingly, Breakin’ 2 resembled a classic musical where the thin narrative gets
repeatedly punctuated by extended song and dance numbers that have no rational
foundation in the story itself. The Variety review characterized it as a “comic book of a
film,” noting that, “as in a cartoon, kids can get away with anything to have a good time.
Characters are larger than life stick-figures who inhabit a kind of make-believe fantasy
land” ("Breakin' 2 Electric Boogaloo"). Or as Melvin Donalson quoted one Box Office
reviewer as writing, “[i]f you’ve seen even one Judy Garland/Mickey Rooney/hey-ganglet’s-put-on-a-show musical, you know how it turns out…” (14). Whereas earlier hiphopsploitation films featuring breaking, including the original Breakin’, tended to focus
on its competitive side by highlighting b-boy battles, Breakin’ 2 focused more heavily on
“ensemble choreography” ("Breakin' Two Is Electric Boogaloo"); even the single battle
scene in the film relies heavily on group choreography.
The plot of Breakin’ 2, as already noted, follows a well-worn storyline where the
protagonists must band together in order to save a disadvantaged community threatened
by rich outsiders. In this case, Ozone and Turbo have gone to work at Miracles, a local
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community center, teaching breakin’ and graffiti as ways to avoid gang life, while Kelly
returns to the neighborhood after a lackluster run dancing in a chorus line. When
Miracles is threatened by a rich developer and corrupt city planner, Ozone, Turbo, and
Kelly work to galvanize the community into raising enough money to fight the
encroaching destruction of the center. Along the way, Ozone and Kelly resume their
sublimated romance, Turbo falls in love with a Spanish-speaking salsa dancer from the
park, and Kelly must decide whether she wants to stay and help or move to Paris to
continue her dancing at the behest of her agent and parents. Of course no narrative would
be complete without the whole crew needing to fend off challenges (via dance of course)
by an area gang. Ultimately the crew helps the Miracles community organize a huge
performance to fundraise the rest of the money and save miracles.
Reception
Though grossing only a little over $15 million domestically, less than half of
Breakin’ and a million shy of Beat Street, Breakin’ 2 proved highly profitable for Cannon
Group. Despite being the third highest grossing film in the genre, Breakin’ 2, it received
only moderate attention. While large advertisements for Breakin’ 2: Electric Boogaloo
appeared on the pages of the NY Amsterdam News and the LA Sentinel, coverage of the
film in the black press was slim. Only one review appeared in the Chicago Defender,
while the Pittsburgh Courier ran a feature on Quinones and the Columbus Times (GA)
included a review as part of a story on the soundtrack the following year in May. The
film was also reviewed in the NY Times and mentioned twice in two other articles, one
about a panel of adolescents being used to rate films. As already noted, the majority of
the reviewers commented on the film’s resemblance to more classical musicals, critiquing
the film for it’s clichéd style and frequently noting that the breaking “is a little boring”
(Wade) and/or “dated” ("Breakin' 2 Electric Boogaloo"). A few articles diverged,
praising the film for it’s “electric excitement” (Calloway "'Breakin' 2- Is Simply Fantastic
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Showing Adventurous Choreography"), and “hook-filled music and razzle-dazzle
dancing” ("Breakin' Two Is Electric Boogaloo").
One of the most curious reviews of all the films is Earl Calloway’s January 9th,
1985 article in the Chicago Defender. First, there’s the language that Calloway uses to
describe the film. It is absurdly positive and over-the-top. The title of the article,
“’Breakin’ 2- is Simply Fantastic Showing Adventurous Choreography,” exemplifies
this, as does his description of the film as “pure theatrical magic.” He goes on to fill his
review with phrases like; “a questing barrage of adventurous choreographer;” “sizzling
hot because of its electric excitement, its dazzling costumes, its wholesome humor and its
loud rhythmic music that throbbed with intensity;” “Shabba-Doo spoke with twosworded eloquence;” “[Shabba-Doo] is a developing young actor with a big basket filled
with superlative gifts that he hands out as he chooses one by one;” “[Lucinda] danced
with authority and rustic polish;” and “‘Breakin’ 2 – Electric Boogaloo’ was thoroughly
delightful, displaying all facets of antics in dance as they wove a spell of enchantment
over the audience.” Not only are some of these grammatically and/or typographically
incorrect, but many are non-sequitors, oxymorons, or malapropisms. In his praise of the
film, he also highlights the content of the story as its most significant part. Given the
preponderance of references to the narrative as astereotypical, clichéd, cartoonish, and “a
throwback to the old film musicals” ("Breakin' 2 Electric Boogaloo"), as well as my own
experience viewing the film, there is little about the content of Breakin’ 2 to set it apart
from any of the others in the group as particularly original, or as an exceptional showcase
of hip-hop culture.
The second aspect of the article I want to highlight is the repetition of the
identical text as paragraphs two and three. The use of absurd and over-the-top language
in praising the film in addition to this glaring error lead me to believe that Calloway did
not see the film. The amount of work that went into the article appears negligible, and
his descriptions of the film gives less information about it than one could discover from
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seeing a preview. It’s also possible to extrapolate, though perhaps tentatively, from this
and the critical reception of the original Breakin’, that the movies were not considered
very important in the Black press. The Defender did not seemingly consider the review’s
potential readership as worthy of significant effort, if even minimal quality. This
disregard within the Black Press can also be read as a response, though not necessarily
overt or explicit, to the exploitation model of the Cannon Group films and lack of
significant Black talent behind the camera; neither did any of the people on the
production end, from director, to producers, to writers, have any significant knowledge of
hip-hop culture.
Body Rock
With the success of the earlier films in the group, along with the similarly danceoriented films Flashdance and Footloose, New World Pictures decided to produce their
own version in the hope of getting a slice of the profit. As one of the larger independent
studios, New World Pictures resembled the Cannon Group. Initially started in 1970 by
Roger Corman, an early king of B-movies and sexploitation films, Corman had sold his
stake in the company by ’83, though the company still focused on B-movie fare up
through the late-‘80s. New World would also branch out into a variety of entertainment
arenas with the early acquisition of Marvel Comics and several TV stations.
Nevertheless it had inconsistent profits and changed hands several times before finally
being acquired by News Corporation in 1997 following 5 years of successful dealings
with Fox Television. New World’s grounding in B-movies and exploitation films is clear
from Body Rock, yet several factors suggest an ambivalence with following the
exploitation-model wholesale; though obviously more akin to Cannon’s films in
production value, some aspects of the film’s narrative and casting choices seem to
resemble Beat Street in their attempts to gain legitimacy and mainstream acceptance.
Narratively, Body Rock seems not to have been content with recreating the thin
and campy story that the Cannon Group films strung between dance numbers. Instead,
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Body Rock makes an attempt to craft a compelling storyline that serves as more than
simply a vehicle for a series of dance numbers. Though this ultimately fails as the story
gets bogged down with derivative and contrived scenarios and flat acting, Body Rock is
not as unabashedly “schlocky” or exploitative as the Breakin’ series. Put differently,
whereas Breakin’ and its sequel accepted their low-budget exploitation status, Body Rock
attempts to deny this, taking itself too seriously even as the production value of the film
betrays it.
In addition to the narrative, the casting choices of Body Rock suggest some
attempt to rise above the exploitation model stereotype of these films. Body Rock
features several semi-reputable cast members that may be read as attempts by the film’s
producers—one of them being Flashdance music director Phil Ramone—to appeal to a
wider audience. The first is Lorenzo Lamas, one of the starts of the daytime soap opera
Falcon Crest. At the time of the films production and release, Lamas was moderately
popular—possessing a certain degree of mainstream name-recognition and star-power
beyond any of the cast featured in earlier hip-hopsploitation films. What’s more, the film
featured recent Golden Globe winning actor Ray Sharkey, and successful Broadway
actor-dancer Vicki Frederick. Body Rock also attempted to cash in on the growing
popularity of MTV by enlisting crew from the world of music videos. Director Marcelo
Epstein and choreography Susan Scanlan had already made a name for themselves within
the world of music videos, Epstein most notably for directing Motley Crüe’s “Looks That
Kill” video. Body Rock was released on September 28th, 1984 in only 240 theaters, by
far the smallest of all the theatrical releases in the genre.
Plot
The story of Body Rock remains relatively simple, following the rise and fall of
Chilly D (Lamas), a principle figure in the fictional Body Rock crew, a group of graffiti
writers and breakers in the South Bronx. Though Chilly D is a member of the crew, he’s
not particularly gifted with either graffiti or breaking, but his large size and smooth
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talking personality seem to have secured him a place at the head of the gang. When a
promoter (Sharkey) sees the Body Rock Crew dance at their local hang out, Chily D is
able to parlay this into a chance to perform at a high-class nightclub. Chilly leaves
behind the rest of the crew with the rational that his success will eventually lead to
opportunities for them, but is soon caught up in the trappings of fame and success. The
more alienated Chilly gets from his crew, the more his dancing begins to lag. Ultimately
Chilly decides that he belongs closer to the street with the Body Rock Crew rather than in
the superficial and fickle world of fame. As could be expected, Body Rock also features
a would-be love story, complete with abandoned homespun beauty and dark, successsucking temptress.
Reception
Body Rock was the least successful of the theatrically released films, bringing in
only $631,849 during opening weekend and a little over $1.68 million total
(BoxOfficeMojo.com "Body Rock"). Of course this must be seen in relation to the
number of theaters in which it was released, since on a per-theater basis, the film
averaged more than most of the later films in the group. In addition to a dismal public
opening, the film was universally panned by critics, garnering only 1.5 stars from Gene
Siskel (Siskel "'Buckarroo Banzai' Funny Ride in Strange Dimension") and harsh words
from the rest. As Donalson quotes Los Angeles Herald Examiner reviewer Elvis Mitchell
as writing, “‘Body Rock’ appears to be nothing more than a hip version of ‘Sesame
Street’…. ‘Body’ turns breakdancing and rap into a joke” (Donalson 15). Canby of the
NY Times called the film “soporific” and largely “noise” (Canby "Film: 'Body Rock,' a
Loud Splice of Life"), while the LA Times Goldstien called it a “mawkish, carefully
homogenized tale” with a “creaky, melodramatic storyline” and contrived happy ending
(Goldstein). The film was not covered in the Black press outside of a biographical
feature in the NY Amsterdam News on the discovery of La Ron A. Smith, a young “street
kid” who plays Chilly D’s main b-boy side-kick, Magic ("Unknown Street Kid Makes
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Winning Debut in Body Rock"). However the feature as well as the more positive
treatments of the film in the NY Times and the industry organ Film and Filmmaking,
were fluffy informational pieces on the making of the movie and published several
months prior to the film’s release rather that responses to it.
Many of the complaints about the film focused on Lorenzo Lamas as Chilly.
Reviewers found his uninspiring, unconvincing, and generally believed he was “horribly
miscast” (Siskel "'Buckarroo Banzai' Funny Ride in Strange Dimension") for the roll of
street kid immersed in the world of hip-hop. Or even more to the point, the idea that
Lamas as Chilly D would somehow be picked to play the nightclub, let alone that he’d be
an integral member of any graffiti and breaking oriented crew, seemed hard to swallow.
As the Variety review of the film noted, “believing Lamas deserves the attention proves
the picture’s biggest obstacle” ("Body Rock"). Reviewers felt the music was compelling,
as were some of the dance performances by minor and supporting members of the cast,
but that the “supremely untalented” (Siskel "'Buckarroo Banzai' Funny Ride in Strange
Dimension") Lamas was only an “adequate performer” at best ("Body Rock"). This
reception of Lamas in his role as a b-boy is interesting given that the initial selection of
Lamas can be read as part of a desire to diverge from the hip-hopsploitation genre pattern
of casting non-actor dancers in leading roles. In this instance, a non-dancer actor seems
to have proven worse.
Rappin’
With the success of Breakin’ and its sequel, the Cannon Group decided to attempt
one last film that would successfully exploit another aspect of hip-hop culture: rapping.
Initially, Golan and Globus intended the film to feature real rappers rather then actors,
and Cannon approached Russell Simmons of Rush Productions and Def-Jam records to
see if he was interested in collaborating. Simmons turned down the offer (more below),
and Cannon went on to make the film with Mario Van Peebles in the starring role. It’s
also likely that Cannon chose to forego other collaborative opportunities given its
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prioritizing of quick, exploitation-style productions; the quick turn-around time needed to
produce Rappin’ would have necessitated full control of the picture and little obligation
to cater to the needs of rap artists, record labels, or music management companies.
Rappin’ was released in 1,150 theaters on May 10, 1985, only five months after Breakin
2: Electric Boogaloo (BoxOfficeMojo.com "Rappin'").
Plot
Rappin’ is essentially an urban take on the Robin Hood fairytale, but with rapping
and a more diverse cast. The story centers on John “Rappin’” Hood (Mario van Peebles),
an ex-con returning to his childhood neighborhood after being released from jail. Intent
on doing good, Hood reorganizes his old gang into a group of rapping do-gooders, not
surprisingly calling them “the Merry Men.” Hood and his crew fight against corrupt
landlords, real estate developers, and a rival gang lead by Hood’s former friend. In his LA
Times review, Michael Wilmington offers a nice thumbnail of the film, writing:
Most Hollywood scripts today have on of three subjects: sex, success or revenge.
Here the screenwriters brew in all three: Rappin’ Hood (Mario Van Peebles) is a
recent ex-con, dueling with his old comrade Duane (Charles Flohe) over the
enticing Dixie—Sex! Dixie (Tasia Valenxa), naturally, is assistant to a producer
hot to sign rap groups—Success! And Duane, racked by jealousy, has been hired
by a nefarious landlor named Thorndike and his craven minion Cedric (working a
slimy real estate scam) to strong-arm all of Hood’s neighbors—Revenge!
Of course Hood is successful in getting the girl, saving the community, and landing a
recording contract, all while, of course, rapping.
Reception
In its first weekend in theaters, Rappin’ grossed a little over $1.8 million, with an
eventual total domestic gross of $2,864,844 (BoxOfficeMojo.com "Rappin'"). This was
significantly down from the Cannon Group’s two earlier films, and while it could indicate
the negative reception of the film, it may also be a result of the particular position in the
genre’s arc. However, given that Krush Groove was able to make almost twice as much
in the opening weekend while playing in only half the number of theaters, it’s more likely
that the earnings reflect the mediocre reception of the film. This is generally supported
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by the reviews of the film in the press. Rappin’ received only moderate coverage in the
press, and even less in the Black press. Only the Baltimore Afro-American carried a full
review of the film, while the New Pittsburgh Courier and New Amsterdam News both
ran features about the film’s location—Pittsburgh—and cast respectively; neither ran
critical reviews. The Afro-American review is by far the most negative, repeatedly
calling the film “boring,” as well as a “clichéd, hackneyed flick that attempts to cash in
on the box office lure of ‘Beat Street’ and ‘Breakin’.’ It is a ‘past tense’ movie that
waited too long to cash in on a trend, much too long” (Douglas).
Only the Variety and Chicago Tribune reviews come as close to being negative in
their critique of the film, both again calling attention to the film’s late attempt to cash in
on hip-hop in the wake of Breakin’s success. As the Variety reviewer notes, “‘Rappin’’
is behind the times” ("Rappin'"; Van Matre). Their negativity aside, the picture that both
reviews paint about the film is similar in tone to the way the other reviews treat it:
Rappin’ is seen as an entertaining and absurdly bubblegum take on rapping. As the
Variety review puts it, “‘Rappin’ is the kind of Hollywood production that makes street
life look like Disneyland,” going on to write that, “On the plus side, ‘Rappin’’ is too
sweet and good natured to take seriously” ("Rappin'"). Similarly, the LA Times reviewer
states that “‘Rappin’ is a movie made for now, for a quick kick,” and advises that if we
“keep it in that perspective… it should send you out of the theater with a smile on your
face” (Wilmington). In short, reviewers tended to see the film as generally entertaining
in a watered down, campy musical kind of way, but that it’s about as accurate a picture of
rapping as the Mickey Mouse Club was a show about rock’n roll.
Krush Groove
Along with Rappin’, Krush Groove was one of the only hip-hopsploitation film to
focus on rapping. The impetus to making the film came after Russel Simmons was
approached by Menahem Golan to work on Rappin’ ("Krush Groove Synopsis"). The
Rush Productions/Def-Jam roster included almost 20 groups, and had already lead to an
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offer from Harry Belafonte to work on the more mainstream Beat Street, which Simmons
turned down. It’s not surprising that a partnership between Golan’s Cannon Group and
Simmons’ Rush/Def-Jam also failed. The Cannon Group was firmly entrenched in an
exploitation model of film production, using their outsider status to leverage as much
profit as possible from a minimum of investment. This was fundamentally in conflict
with Rush/Def-Jam’s ethos and values. As inherently insiders, Rush/Def-Jam’s aim was
to profit by promoting their artist and maximizing investment. In short, the Cannon
Group business model sought to profit by sucking their talent dry, while Rush/Def-Jam’s
priority was to make a profit by developing those same artists.
Simmons came away from the failed deal interested in making a film. His
opportunity came when Run-DMC performed at the cross-country rap tour, the Fresh
Festival. Director Michael Schultz had originally been brought on by producer George
Jackson to make a film of the concert, but Simmons and the Rush/Def-Jam artists
convinced them to do a more conventional narrative film instead. According to the film’s
writer, Ralph Farquhar, the original screenplay was the product of intense interviews with
Simmons and several of the Rush/Def-Jam artists. Russell, however, felt that the story
was too “gritty” for a mainstream audience, and the final screenplay was a softer,
fictionalized take on the story. As the film went in to production, Simmons, an associate
producer, was forced to hand creative control over to Schultz. Krush Groove was shot on
location in New York City in 26 days, for a total budget of $3 million.
Plot
Loosely based on the founding of Rush Productions and Def Jam Records, and the
rise of Russell Simons and Run DMC, Krush Groove follows aspiring music manager
Russell Walker as he attempts to navigate the music business world and create a
successful label. Russell’s main acts are his brother’s group, Run-DMC, Kurtis Blow,
and the DJ duo Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde, and he successfully builds a fan base for his
artists. Along with his partner Rick, played by real-life Def Jam co-founder Rick Rubin,
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Russell produces an album for Run-DMC, but ultimately is unable to pay for its pressing.
Desperate, Russell borrows money from a local loan shark to release the album. As RunDMC gains in popularity, Russell and his brother run are introduced to pop star Sheila E.
Though Run quickly falls in love with and pursues her, Sheila E. chooses to begin a
romance with Russell. As a result, Run and Russell have a falling out, and a jealous and
angry Run signs a new management and record deal with a semi-major label. Unable to
repay the loan shark, Russell begins to self-destruct, and it is only by reuniting with his
brother that Russell is able to find salvation. The film ends with a talent show and artist
auditions for Russell and Rick’s once again prosperous record label, featuring cameos by
The Fat Boys, Beastie Boys, and LL Cool J.
Reception
Krush Groove opened to mixed reviews. Critics tended to disagree on the quality
of the film and its acting, but even its harshest critics still praised the musical
performances by Run-DMC, The Fat Boys, Kurtis Blow, Sheila E., and New Edition that
liberally pepper the film’s narrative. More often then not, it’s the narrative of the film
itself that is subject to critique. As one LA Sentinel review began, “‘Krush Groove’ has a
lot of music and a little bit of story,” though the reviewer was also quick to point out that
this may have been a result of the difficulty of producing an “optimistic” work that
would, in the words of Schultz, “emphasize the uplifting and the worthwhile” (Bell). A
very complimentary Village Voice review dismissed any critique of the film’s plot as
making little sense, praising the film for its avoidance of “the alienated-artist-learns-tocompromise stuff” and the “schlocky battles for aesthetic respectability” of earlier hiphopsploitation films (Christgau and Dibbell). Another reviewer for the NY Amsterdam
News was less forgiving in the his comparison, however, noting that that Krush Groove
does nothing to improve the already poor quality of the genre (Rogers).
Despite the conflicting reactions of critics, coverage of the film in the press was
only rivaled by Beat Street. This was especially true in the Black press, though reviews
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there were no more likely to treat the movie favorably than more “mainstream” or film
industry oriented publications. Despite bringing in only a little over $11 million at the
box office, the low initial budget made Krush Groove one of the more profitable films of
the genre. Opening at only 519 theaters, less than half the average number of most of the
other films, it made almost enough to cover it’s $3 million budget in the first weekend, an
especially impressive number given the film was released towards the end of the cycle.
It’s interesting to note that out of all the films in the cycle, only Krush Groove and
Delivery Boys were rated R. Given that youth made up a primary target audience for
these films, the R-rating may have hindered the profitability of Krush Groove by limiting
its accessibility.
Delivery Boys
Of all of the hip-hopsploitation films, Delivery Boys is the strangest, most
obscure, and likely the worst (though Rappin’ and Body Rock give it a run for its
money). There is very little information available about either the production or
reception of the film. From what little I can piece together, it appears that Delivery Boys
was the idea of its director, Ken Handler, a musician who became interested in the
emerging hip-hop scene surrounding him in New York (Beck). Ken was also the son of
Ruth and Elliot Handler, co-founders of Mattel Toys and inventors of the famous Barbie
12
and Ken dolls, toys they named after their two children Barbara and Ken.
Plot
Delivery Boys centers on a group of breakers that enter a local “breakdancing”
contest. Most of the breakers work as delivery boys for a local pizza parlor, and when
their employer is intimidated by a rival crew’s leader, the boys are sent across the city in
an attempt to keep them from performing in the contest. Most of the film follows the
12
Interestingly, New World Pictures (renamed New World Entertainment), the
distributors of the film, would eventually go on to consider purchasing Mattel in 1987,
though the acquisition never happened.
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three primary delivery boys as they use their dance skills to escape, with absurd lowbudget hilarity ensuing, and at least one instance of non-diagetic singing in classical
Hollywood musical style. Despite the obstacles put in their way, the breakers manage to
show up just in time to compete. Though hampered by wigs, dresses, and a medical
gown—all vestiges of their adventures—the breakers defeat the rival crew and win the
contest.
Reception
The one published review of the film, appearing in the July 30th, 1986 issue
Variety, states that, “‘Delivery Boys’ is a lesser entry in the spate of breakdancing films
made during the short-lived fad in 1984. Low-budgeter was acquired by New World but
sent directly to homevideo with no theatrical release” ("Delivery Boys"). It seems safe to
assume that the lack of coverage in the press is a direct result of the film’s direct-tovideocassette status. More generally, while there are several scenes where characters
break, the film is clearly styled after the low budget and campy Breakin’ model rather
than the more realistic and narrative-driven Wild Style or Beat Street model. The film
even stars Mario Van Peebles, the protagonist of Rappin’, as the voodoo wielding West
Indian leader of the rival breaking crew. It also featured the Dynamic Breakers, an
offshoot of the Dynamic Rockers, one of the two main breaking crews in the ‘80s along
with the Rock Steady Crew (the two gained early media attention for their now famous
Lincoln Center battle in August of ’81).
Fast Forward
What makes Fast Forward most notable is its director, Sidney Poitier. Similar to
Harry Belafonte’s Beat Street, Fast Forward seems to be an interesting mix of insider and
outsider production. On the one hand, Poitier, as well as Belafonte, represented one of
the few big African-American names in Hollywood. As an Oscar winning actor, Poitier
was attempting to use that cache to call attention to a youth-oriented phenomenon that he
found compelling, but was otherwise largely unfamiliar with. As with Beat Street, the
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film is loaded with good intentions, but the lack of either first hand experience with or
genuine understanding for the particular sub-culture being treated in the film leaves it
looking inauthentic. Thus, while Fast Forward is clearly attempting to diverge from the
overt exploitation model of many of the hip-hopsploitation films, it nevertheless does so
by failing to integrate sub-cultural insiders into the production. That said, Poitier does
make a concerted effort to put African-American talent behind the camera, including the
first African-American female Assistant Director on a major studio film ("Murphy
Challenged;Diana, Jarreau to Film"). Fast Forward was released in 1,162 theaters on
February 15, 1985 (BoxOfficeMojo.com "Fast Forward").
Plot
Fast Forward follows a group of eight high school students from Sandusky, OH as
they sneak off to New York City to enter Sabol Entertainment’s Shootout, a talent show
put on by a big time talent agency. The Adventurous Eight, as the group of modern/ballet
dancers and pop singers calls themselves, shows up only to discover that the man who
promised them a chance to try out has died, and the money-hungry and corrupt
replacement seems uninterested in honoring his predecessor’s promise. He eventually
agrees to audition them in three weeks, putting the Eight, having only planned on staying
in the city for three days, in a tough position. The kids decide to stay, and after watching
a group of “street dancers” perform in front of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, attempt
to earn enough money to survive by putting on similar shows. Opportunity seems to
knock when a rich young woman is interested in hiring them for her mother’s dinner
party. Conflicts soon arise however. First, one of the male dancers becomes infatuated
with the young woman, casing him to break the heart of his girlfriend/fellow dancer,
who, as a result, threatens to leave the group. Then, the Eight are challenged to a dance
off at a local club by the group of street dancers they’d seen earlier. Since the Eight lack
hip new—and particularly street oriented—dance moves, they are defeated by the street
dancers, who tell them to leave their territory. The Eight decide they need to spend the
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next weeks scouting local clubs for new moves that they can integrate into their routines.
Eventually the Eight defeat the street dancers in a rematch armed with their updated
moves. Finally, with the help of the old talent scout’s widow, the teens sneak into the
Shootout and steal the show.
Reception
Fast Forward was almost universally panned by critics. Reviews in the Black
press tended to be more generous, and the only overall positive response came from the
reviewer in the Atlanta Daily World, who seemed to find the film entertaining while
offering little substantive praise ("Ebony Etchings"). The LA Sentinel reviewer found
the movie similarly “fun, but flawed,” noting that the dancing was often “fascinating” but
the story and script were the films “weakest points” (Lloyd). Even these positive reviews
found it difficult to take the film seriously, seeing it as campy fun and entertaining
dancing.
Like Breakin’ 2, reviews frequently discussed Fast Forward in ways that drew
comparison to more traditional musicals. As NY Times reviewer Vincent Canby
remarked, “the roots of the screenplay are in the old tradition of Mickey Rooney-Judy
Garland musicals” ("Film: 'Fast Forward,' by Poitier"). Other reviews echoed the general
sentiment, calling the “squeaky clean” (Canby "Growing up Misunderstood in Today's
America") film an “updated backlot musical” (Kempley) that treats the subject with “oldfashioned quaintness” ("Fast Forward"). The labeling of Fast Forward as a musical was
anticipated by Poitier, who explicitly rejects the film as a musical in one early Chicago
Tribune interview. Poitier goes on to say, “how could I direct a musical” I am tone deaf
and have two left feet” (Thomas).
The Wall Street Journal review, though not labeling it a musical, nevertheless
evokes the parallel by calling it a “wonderful spoof of Flashdance, Beat Street, and
Fame” (Salamon). Salamon continues her backhanded compliment by arguing that
there’s no other way to describe the clichéd dialogue of the film. Paul Attanasio of the
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Washington Post takes the idea a bit further, turning his review of the film into a short
quiz that creatively highlights his dislike of the film and its clichéd dialogue and
storyline. Other reviewers were more direct in critiquing the film, calling it “an
innocuous, but stupefyingly daffy dance debacle” (Kempley) and noting that as “one of
the weaker entries in the recent slew of youth dance films… [it] should be fast gone at the
boxoffice” ("Fast Forward"). Variety’s assessment of the film’s “meager b.o. chances”
("Fast Forward") were correct; Fast Forward grossed a little over $1.5 million in the first
week and only $2,791,350 total domestically (BoxOfficeMojo.com "Fast Forward").
Turk 182
In some ways, this film fits least within this perspective genre. It contains little in
the way of hip-hop culture other than a smattering of graffiti, and the cast is made up of
an assortment of B-rate white actors, most notably a young Timothy Hutton, the TV actor
Robert Ulrich, and the still unknown Kim Cattrall. The film was also helmed by Bob
Clark, the director of Porky’s, a low-brow but highly successful sexploitation film, and A
Christmas Story, a much less successful but slightly higher-brow movie. The choice of
Clark as the director also implies that the film may not have been intended to fit within
any genre organized around hip-hop or African-American culture, a claim supported by
the all white cast. The film opened in 801 theaters on February 15, 1985, the same day as
Fast Forward.
Plot
In Turk 182, Jimmy Lynch, the film’s white protagonist, approaches the New
York City mayor to ask for help with the case of Jimmy’s older brother Terry, a fireman
being denied city benefits after being injured in a rescue while off-duty and under the
influence. When the major rejects Jimmy’s plea, and inspired by some politically
oriented graffiti he sees at a rally, Jimmy launches a public campaign to embarrass the
mayor; as “Turk 182,” Jimmy tags up the city, calling attention to the mayor’s failed
graffiti war. Though he quickly becomes popular with the city and public enemy number
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one with the police force, Jimmy pushes the campaign to the limits, risking his life and
ultimately wining the respect of the mayor and the heart of the woman he loves, his
brother’s case worker.
Reception
Despite the title and the appearance of being centered on graffiti, there is very
little actual graffiti in the film. Jimmy “Turk 182” bombs one train, and we see evidence
of his tags in several montages. The style of the graffiti more often resemble the ancient
Roman variety—political slogans and skewers—than the graffiti recognizable as part of
hip-hop culture at that time. Nevertheless, the film is clearly relying on a connection
between the film’s narrative and the contemporaneous public controversy surrounding
graffiti in NY. Additionally, it’s this poor integration of graffiti into the film that makes it
so clearly part of the hip-hopsploitation film genre. The film exhibits graffiti in an
attempt to exploit the element of hip-hop culture for financial gain. While earlier films
attempted to compensate for the terrible storyline with the spectacle of hip-hop cultural
forms, Turk 182 fails to even do that.
This may be part of why the film had an ambivalent reception. Grossing a little
over $1.5 million in the first weekend and $3,594,997 total domestically, the film
garnered no attention in the Black press—not surprising given that the film lacks any
significant African-American talent either in front of or behind the camera—and
generally mediocre reviews from both industry and mainstream press sources. Only
Variety, which saw the film as a “populist drama,” thought it would do well with
audiences ("Turk 182"). Other reviewers saw the film as a “hit-and-miss adventure film”
(Warnick) with “terrible dialogue” and humor that “should have been sharp and tonguein-cheek,” but is instead “on a strictly TV movie level” (McGillivray). As the title of
Gene Siskel’s Chicago Tribune review states, “Lousy has a new definition: ‘Turk 182’”
("Lousy Has a New Definition: 'Turk 182'"). While many of the reviewers agreed with
Siskel, citing either the acting, storyline, or a host of holes in the plot, it’s interesting to
283
note that most of the reviews also identify the film with graffiti, despite the scarcity of
graffiti in the film itself.
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APPENDIX B:
“BEAT STREET BREAKDOWN”
Beat Street Breakdown (Film Version)
(Transcribed by the author from the DVD version of Beat Street)
Kenney:
Beat Street Breakdown, rrrrhaa!
Beat Street, the king of the beat
You see him rockin that beat from across the street
And huh-huh, Beat Street is a lesson, too
Because ah, you can't let the streets beat you
Uh!
Well, a picture can express a thousand words
To describe all the beauty of life you give
And if the world was yours to do over
I know you'd paint a better place to live
Where the colors would swirl
And the boys and girls can grow in peace and harmony
And where murals stand on walls so grand
As far as the eyes are able to see, ha
I never knew art till I saw your face
And there'll never be one to take your place
Cause each and every time you touch a spraypaint can
Michaelangelo's soul controls your hands
Then serenades of blue and red
And the beauty of the rainbow fills your head
Crescendo colors playin tunes
Man why oh why you'd have to die so soon?
Say it One two three four
Just let me know what you came here for
And just clap your hands everybody
And let me know that I’m not alone
And if you knew my main man when he was alive
Scream it out and Say Ramon (Ramon!)
I’m talking about ashes to ashes and dust to dust
Where the good die young is all thy must
Cause as life must live death must die
And the tears shall fall from the living eye
Tell me who's gonna dream the impossible dream
Of the beautiful cities and the island's (Genes?)
When your works of art brought into being
All that the ghetto stopped you from seeing
Still life urban masterpiece
Your trademark was written on trains and walls
A million dollar gift only God released
Huh, and yet you got killed for nothin at all
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So after this there'll be no more hard time
No more bad times and no more pain
No more chump change, none of that bull
Just movies, museums and the hall of fame
So all you hip-hops, get on up
And let's take it to the top where we belong
Cause the age of the Beat Street wave is here
Everybody let's sing along, now come on
And say hooo (Hooo)
Say hooo (Hooo)
Grandmaster Melle Mel:
And to let me know I'm rockin the microphone
Everybody say Ramon (Ramon)
Ramon (Ramon)
Rrrrhaa!
A newspaper burns in the sand
And the headlines say 'Man Destroys Man'
Extra extra, read all the bad news
On the war for peace that everybody would lose
The rise and fall, the last great empire
The sound of the whole world caught on fire
The ruthless struggle, the desperate gamble
The game that left the whole world in shambles
The cheats, the lies, the alibies
And the foolish attempts to conquer the sky
Lost in space, and what is it worth?
Huh, the President just forgot about Earth
Spendin multi-billions and maybe even trillions
The cost of weapons ran in the zillions
There's gold in the street and there's diamond under feet
And the children in Africa don't even eat
Flies on their faces, they're livin like mice
And their houses even make the ghetto look nice
Huh, the water tastes funny, it's forever too sunny
And they work all month and don't make no money
A fight for power, a nuclear shower
A people shout out in the darkest hour
Sights unseen and voices unheard
And finally the bomb gets the last word
Christians killed Muslims and Germans killed Jews
And everybody's bodies are used and abused
Huh, minds are poisoned and souls are polluted
Superiority complex is deep rooted
Leeches and lices, and people got prices
Egomaniacs control the self-righteous
Nothin is sacred and nothin is pure
So the revelation of death is our cure
Dachau, Auschwitz, Hiroshima
Vietnam, Leningrad, Iwogima
Okinawa, Korea, the Philippines
Devastation, Death, cash killing machine
Peoples in terror, the leaders made a error
286
And now they can't even look in the mirror
Cause we gotta suffer while things get rougher
And that's the reason why we got to get tougher
So learn from the past and work for the future
And don't be a slave to no computer
Cause the children of Man inherits the land
And the future of the world is in your hands
So just throw your hands in the air
And wave em like you just don't care
And if you believe that you're the future
Scream it out and say oh yeah (Oh yeah)
Oh yeah (Oh yeah)
Rrrrhaa!
Do You Believe? (Yeah)
Kenny: Do you believe? (Yeah)
Both: Do you believe? (yeah)
Reverend Fowler:
Let me hear you say yeah? (yeah)
Yeah! (yeah)
Yeah! (yeah)
Yeah! (Yeah)
Ohhhhhhh Believe it.
Believe it x8
They buried us
So we became a flower, believe it (believe it)
Believe it (believe it)
They gave us nothing
So we took power, believe it (believe it)
Believe it (believe it)
Believe it x2 (believe it)
They tried to break us
But now we’re the breakers, believe it (believe it)
Believe it (believe it)
We come from the ashes
The movers and shakers
(Believe it) Believe it (believe it)
Believe it (believe it) Believe it
(now we’re going up)
When we’re hip-hop
(now we’re going up)
We’re going to take it to the top
(now we’re going up)
We can’t stop believing
Believe it (believe it)
(Skank) x8
(Break!)
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We are the harvest, of a bitter seed
Some of us fall, some of us (flee?)
But we are the future, and we will succeed
Believe it x2
We are the miracle, we are the strong
We are the right that can’t be wrong
We made hope, into a song
Believe it x4
Ha ha ho! Yeah
Believe it
Ahhh, A Christian
A Muslim
A Hindu
A Jew
Believe it (believe it)
I believe in me, I believe in you
He he oh
(Do you, believe?) x10
Beat Street Breakdown (Album Version)
(Taken from Lyrics007.com)
Beat Street Breakdown, Raah!
Hip-hop!
Beat Street
The king of the beat
You see him rocking that beat from across the street
And Huh Huh!
Beat Street is a lesson too, because you can't let the Streets beat you!
Well a picture can express a thousand words to describe all the beauty of life you give
And if the world was yours to do over, I know you'd paint a better place to live
Where the colors would swirl and the boys and girls can grow in peace and harmony
And where murals stand on walls so grand as far as the eyes are able to see, Ha!
I never knew art til I saw your face and there'll never be one to take your place
‘Cause each and every time you touch the spray paint can
Michelangelo's soul controls your hand
Then serenades of blue and red and the beauty of the rainbow fills your head
Crescendo of colors hang in tune, Man why oh why d'ya have to die so soon?
Ashes to ashes and dust to dust, where the good die young it's all thy must
‘Cause as life must live, death must die and the tear shall fall from the living eye, Huh!
The teardrops fall for the state of mind of the beautiful lady that you left behind
In love and alone, but now you're dead, and she still can't get you out of her head, Huh!
More tears fall for all you've done, trying to be a good father to your only son
But now who's gonna make sure that he's fed, put a shirt on his back and a roof overhead?
Tell me who's gonna dream the impossible dream of the beautiful cities in the islands
genes?
When your works of art brought into being all that the ghetto stopped you from seeing
Bums on the sidewalk, garbage in the streets, abandoned buildings, bricks of concrete
The ladies on the corner are selling their bodies, and everybody wants a part in that party
I'm hanging out tough, rocking late at night, running wild in the town of the neon light
You either play some ball or stand in the hall Huh!
288
You gotta make something outta nothing at all
I'm sitting in the classroom learning the rules and it says you can't do graffiti in school
They can't be wrong in the hallowed hall, so my notebook turned into a brick wall
The heart of a lion and the courage of three, and the mind of a man much wiser than me
You're the soul of the brother who won't come back
Who died in my arms on the railroad track
‘Cause I'm caught in the rat race, looking for my own space
There's gotta be a better place for you and me
There's pie in the sky, and an eye for an eye
Some people gotta die just to be free
You search for justice and what do you find?
You find just us on the unemployment line
You find just us sweating from dawn to dusk
There's no justice, there's Huh, just us, Ha!
Still life urban masterpiece, your trademark was written on trains and walls
A million dollar gift only God released, and yet you got killed for nothing at all
So after this there'll be no more hard times, no more bad times and no more pain
No more chump change, none of that bull
Just movies, museums and the hall of fame
So all you Hip-hops get on up, and let's take it to the top where we belong
‘Cause the age of the Beat Street wave is here
Everybody let's sing along, now c'mon, say ‘Ho!' (‘Ho!'), Say ‘Ho!' (‘Ho!')
And to let me know I'm rocking the microphone everybody say ‘Ramo!' (‘Ramo!')
‘Ramo!' (‘Ramo!')
Raah!
A newspaper burns in the sand, and the headlines say ‘Man destroys Man!'
Extra! Extra! Read all the bad news on the war for peace that everybody would lose
The rise and fall, the last great empire, the sound of the whole world caught on fire
The ruthless struggle, the desperate gamble
The game that left the whole world in shambles
The cheats, the lies, the alibis
And the foolish attempt to conquer the skies
Lost in space, and what is it worth, huh?
The president just forgot about Earth
Spending multi billions, and maybe even trillions
The cost of weapons ran into zillions
There's gold in the street, and diamonds under feet
And the children in Africa don't even eat
Flies on their faces, they're living like mice
And the houses even make the ghetto look nice, Huh!
The water tastes funny, it's forever too sunny
And they work all month and don't make no money
A fight for power, a nuclear shower
And people shout out in the darkest hour
Of sights unseen and voices unheard
And finally the bomb gets the last word
Christians killed Muslims, and Germans killed Jews
And everybody's bodies are used and abused, Huh!
Minds are poisoned and souls are polluted
Superiority complex is deep rooted
Leeches and lice's, and people got prices
Egomaniacs control the self-righteous
Nothing is sacred and nothing is pure
289
So the revelation of death is our cure
Hitler and Caesar, Custer and Reagan
Napoleon, Castro, Mussolini and Begin
Ghengis Khan and the Shah of Iran
Mixed with the blood of the weaker man
The peoples in terror, the leaders made the error
And now they can't even look in the mirror
‘Cause we gotta suffer while things get rougher
And that's the reason why we got to get tougher
To learn from the past and work for the future
And don't be a slave to no computer
‘Cause the Children of Man inherits the land
And the future of the world is in your hands
So just throw your hands in the air
And wave ‘em like you just don't care
And if you believe that you're the future
Scream it out and say ‘Oh yeah!' (‘Oh yeah!')
‘Oh yeah!' (‘Oh yeah!')
Raah!
Beat Street Breakdown
Raah!
Hip-hop!
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APPENDIX C:
THE EMERGENCE OF HOME AUDIO AND VIDEO
Historical Overview: Home Audio
In order to contextualize the comparative analysis of home audio and video
hardware in Chapter 6, I offer a brief history of relevant technologies. I begin with a
brief historical overview of the development of record players, radios, and audiotapes and
CDs.
Record Players
As with many pieces of technology, Thomas Edison is credited with inventing the
first “record player,” the phonograph. In 1877 Edison demonstrated his phonograph at
the New York office of Scientific American magazine (Coleman 10). The phonograph,
initially intended by Edison as a dictation/transcription—or “talking”—machine, initially
utilized a cylinder of tinfoil wrapped cardboard on which was etched vertical grooves that
were both produced and read by a stylus attached to an amplifying horn. Speaking into
the horn while turning the cylinder via a hand crank vibrated a small diaphragm attached
to the stylus, etching the sound wave into the foil. In reverse, the stylus would “read” the
grooves on the tinfoil and translate them into vibrations on the diaphragm, which were in
turn amplified by the horn.
Over time, competition with other inventors—and soon manufacturers as
corporations took over the process of innovation—would lead to a series of modifications
to this original design. First, the basic design of the cylinder would be replaced by the
disc, and the materials changed from foil, to wax, to shellac, and finally, to vinyl. In
addition, the size of the record, a determining factor in the amount of content it was
capable of holding, shifted from a short 2-minutes, to the much longer 25 minutes per
side of an LP. Connected to determining the amount of content was the speed of the
record player, which would change from an inconsistent hand crank, to a more
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standardized 78rpm, and eventually, to the dual speed machines capable of playing
records at 33 1/3 and 45rpm. Finally, the look of the machines changed, moving from a
piece of household furniture, as the early phonograph cabinets were viewed, to just one
more component of home entertainment technology (not to mention portable electronics),
in the form of stereo or computer components.
Radio
Though less directly important for my argument, the development of radio is also
an important milestone in the history of home audio technology. Work on wireless
telegraphy, the predecessor of radio, began at the start of the 1880s, a few years after the
invention of the record player. It wasn’t until almost forty years later in 1920, that
1
commercial radio began, however. Household penetration of radio, when radio became
a commodified part of consumer home audio, began in 1923. By 1925-1930, radios were
estimated to be in 30% of American households (Klopfenstein 31), and at the beginning
of the 80s, the penetration rate of radio had long since reached a plateau at 98% (see
Figure 7). The reason that radio is not as directly important to my argument is that it
does not function to commodify hip-hop. This is largely a function of the economic
structure of broadcasting. Rather than sell a particular product, whether it be a song or
TV show, broadcasting sells air-time in the form of commercials. Alternately, we can
think of radio as selling access to potential consumers (the audience) to producers. Since
my focus is on the way that hip-hop culture was itself being commodified, radio, as well
as television, does not fully fit within the scope of my argument.
1
This, as well as the inventor of radio, remains a somewhat contentious issue, and there
are many credible claims for attributing the innovations to different individuals and
organizations. Since I am painting broad strokes here, I will not discuss this controversy
in detail.
292
Audiotape and CD
The same technology that would lead to the invention of the VCR, magnetic tape,
was also necessary for the invention of audiocassette tapes. The most immediate
predecessor of the cassette tape was the 8-track. The technological shortcomings of the
8-track, for example the inability to rewind and the poor recording quality, destined it to
fail, while its advantages, including most obviously its compact and portable design, left
music consumers with a taste of what was possible in a post vinyl world. Record players
and vinyl had already hit a roadblock at the end of the 70s, in part due to the backlash
against the highly associated disco music genre. Even more importantly, however,
audiocassettes offered consumers frustrated with the available content an opportunity to
take matters into their own hands. This was especially appealing since radio represented
a free source of content when compared to vinyl. CDs, which became available in 1983,
offered yet another format. Because CDs, like records, were capable of random access
(the ability to begin playback at any point on album), they were more appealing than the
linearly restricted audiocassette tapes. By the beginning of the 1990s, CDs were closing
in on tapes as the most common form of recorded music.
Historical Overview: Home Video
Having discussed the relevant audio technologies, I will now offer a brief history
of the emergence of relevant video technologies. I cover the emergence of film and
television, magnetic tape, and VTR/VCR technologies.
Film and Television
The narrative of home video’s development, while similar to home audio in some
regards, is set nearly a century later. As a result, some important differences exist not
only in the way video was developed as a technology, but in the way it was taken up by
consumers as well. Unlike the Edison’s phonograph, video technology and the VCR
were not developed by a single individual. Instead, the development of video technology
came largely as a result of corporate research and development efforts post-World War II.
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While film was already in the marketplace, having been developed in the 1890s by both
Edison and the French Lumiere brothers, attempts to adapt the film technology for home
use were generally unsuccessful. Film is mechanical technology, but video is a
thoroughly electronic one (though it can be either analog or digital). Despite the current
conflation of film, television, and home video technologies in the popular mind, these
2
technologies were not particularly compatible from the outset. While broadcast
3
television, which had developed out of advances in radio in the 1930s and 40s, would
eventually begin recording content on film for later broadcast, initially much of the
content was produced live due to the high cost of film and the technological limitations of
televisual recording. The high cost of film was also a contributing factor in the failure of
early attempts to make home movie watching on film a successful consumer commodity.
Magnetic Tape
It wasn’t until the invention of magnetic tape, the primary component technology
of home video, and its capacity to record television—i.e. video—signals, that the
recording process was affordable enough for mass production and the consumer
marketplace. Magnetic tape was developed in Germany in the years leading up to and
during World War II, but the tense political climate of Europe at the time led to the
2
While the hip-hopsploitation films that I am discussing are films—and there would
seem to be a danger of my repeating such a conflation—my concern here is with the
potential commodity forms of hip-hop culture. Film, like broadcast radio or television, is
not a commodity. Instead, it is more akin to a service, where people pay for the privilege
of sitting in the theater and attending a film. This chapter and project are more concerned
with the commodified forms of hip-hop that would have the potential for diffusion within
the home, and by extension, to influence hip-hop’s re-articulation in mainstream culture.
3
Wasser claims that, “Magnetic recording, which is the underlying principle of video
recording, was invented at roughly the same time as radio broadcasting. While radio
quickly captured the public imagination, fifty years would pass before the average citizen
would even hear of magnetic recording” Frederick Wasser, Veni, Vidi, Video: The
Hollywood Empire and the Vcr (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2001) 49.
294
4
developing companies, namely the German electronics manufacturer AEG, to keep the
developments a secret. Little was know about magnetic tape until the end of World War
II when the allies plundered Nazi technological caches. Early magnetic tape was of
limited capacity and only suited to audio, and the dominant mode of use was in large and
open reel-to-reel systems. The first company to introduce video tape recorders, was the
small American firm Ampex at the beginning of the 1950s.
Video Tape/Cassette Recorders (VTR/VCR)
Building on its own innovations of German audio magnetic tape technology,
Ampex beat out the much larger CBS and RCA, then the leading American electronics
firms. Over the next 25 years, several firms, including the Dutch firm Philips, and the
Japanese Pioneer, Sony, Matsushita, and JVC, all developed various forms of consumer
oriented home video technologies. While magnetic tape remained the favored component
technology, there were also several attempts to market video discs. All of these attempts
either failed outright, due to severe technological issues in the case of many video-discs,
or met with extremely limited success. When Sony introduced the Betamax
videocassette recorder in 1975, it was the first commercially viable home video
technology. Within two years, JVC/Matsushita had introduced the competing VHS
format, which would eventually out-perform Betamax and gain almost complete market
dominance by 1987 (Klopfenstein 28). Even so, it wasn’t until well into the 1990s that
home video would catch up to the high household penetration of home audio.
Inter-Technological Competition: The Format Wars
The inter-technological competition between formats within home audio and
video technologies altered how each, as an overarching category of consumer electronics,
4
Interestingly, AEG was formed at the end of the 19th century by a wealthy Jewish
German named Emil Rathenau who had bought patents for several of Edison’s
inventions, though not, apparently, for the phonograph.
295
would diffuse into American society. Below are four examples of inter-technological
competition, two from audio and two from video.
Cylinder vs. Disc Records
Almost from the outset, the invention of the record player was a competitive
affair. Within years of Edison’s invention of the phonograph, competing systems were
popping up. The main competition at this early point was between Edison’s
phonograph—made out of wax by 1880 after the invention of a competing system by
Alexander Graham Bell—and Emil Berliner’s gramophone. While Edison’s phonograph
played a vertically recorded cylinder, Emile Berliner’s gramophone used a laterally
recorded disc—a feature that would ultimately result in it being referred to colloquially as
a “turntable.” Berliner’s gramophone was a playback-only system, meaning it could only
be used to record sound, as opposed to the dictation oriented and thus record and
playback-capable phonograph.
Still, it had several advantages that would ultimately make it the dominant form of
“record playing” technology. First, in making it playback-only, Berliner demonstrated a
clearer vision of the market. While Edison and Bell intended their systems to be dictation
machines, Berliner’s system lent itself to use with music. More than this, however, the
playback-only nature of the disc system gave it an advantage in the recording process.
“Berliner’s process allowed for the creation of a master recording. Eventually, this
practice led to the mass production of records: an unlimited number of gramophone discs
could be stamped from a single master recording. Manufacturing an equal number of
Edison cylinders required a bank of recorders and many repeated takes in the studio”
(Coleman 13). The design of the gramophone hardware made it fit more easily within a
commodity capitalist system where mass production roughly translates into greater
diffusion.
The narrower focus and ease of its usage as well as the potential for mass
production also let the gramophone be more aggressive marketed. The better marketing
296
of the disc-spinning gramophone eventually led to its dominance over the cylinderspinning phonograph, though Edison continued marketing his cylinder phonograph into
the 1920s. One of the key factors allowing a more aggressive marketing of the
gramophone hardware, was the increased availability and selection of its corresponding
software, the musical content. Since the disc gramophone was never intended for use as
a dictation machine, the focus of the gramophone was always about the sale of
prerecorded materials. As a result, the producers of the gramophone made sure that its
content was superior to what was available on the cylinders. Not only the selection of
content superior on the gramophone, but the disc itself was more convenient to store and
use than the cylinder.
LP Vs. 45
Up through the middle of the 1940s, the recording industry was relatively stable,
moving towards a standardized 78rpm disc format. This changed when World War II
caused a shortage of shellac, the primary material of the 78s, and forced the American
recording industry to begin work on a suitable replacement. Peter Goldmark at CBS
would eventually replace shellac with vinyl, in the process inventing the 33 1/3rpm LP
disc that is now standard on record players. The creation of the 12-inch LP also lead to
the invention of the 7-inch 45rpm record by CBS’s main rival, RCA. The two competed
for several years in what Coleman refers to as “the infamous Battle of the Speeds”
(Coleman xxii), confusing consumers with conflicting formats and advertising
campaigns. Before long, however, the two companies called a truce and began
manufacturing equipment compatible with both formats. Though neither company
gained total dominance of the market, each format was suited to a particular purpose
within the music industry. LPs were suited to classical music, and eventually, entire
albums. 45s, ideally suited for the hit single, became the staple of popular music genres
like rock’n roll.
297
VHS Vs. Betamax
The dynamic of the VHS and Betamax War was very different. As discussed
earlier, the complexity of electronic technologies, even if they are both analog formats,
means that competition is likely to function as a winner take all conflict, where the two
seemingly similar formats are nevertheless perpetually incompatible. Whereas 45s and
LPs were able to coexist (though 45s are no longer produced in any noticeable amount) in
perpetuity, VHS and Betamax never had this option. The technology required meant that,
from the outset, the two were inherently incompatible. Accommodating both 45s and
LPs was simply a matter of placing a dual speed motor in record player and an adapter to
fit the larger hole of the 45. However a dual format (VHS and Betamax) machine would
require essentially placing two different machines in one. Importantly, doing so would
require patent clearance for the rival format, something unlikely to be granted in this
case. The VHS and Betamax war resembles the earlier battle between the cylinder
phonograph and the disc gramophone, where the two technologies were so different as to
be essentially incompatible. Even in this case, however, the cylinder and disc records
were able to coexist for several decades before Edison pulled the plug on the cylinder
records in the 1920s (Wasser 74).
Like the competition between the phonograph and gramophone, the VHS
Betamax war was ultimately decided by a number of factors, most notably the difference
in playing time and the availability of content. VCRs were initially marketed under the
banner of consumer self-empowerment. A VCR would allow the consumer to record
their favorite TV shows for later viewing, a practice called time-shifting. One of
consumer home video’s key selling points was the dual ability to record and playback
content, something that would also negatively affect the laser-disc technology. This was
a primary factor in making Sony’s Betamax the first viable consumer video format where
earlier, playback only formats had failed. An important factor for time-shifting was the
capacity of the format. Initially developed as a one-hour cassette, Betamax was
298
perpetually behind VHS in tape length, having been released as a two-hour cassette.
Even when Sony increased the Betamax to two-hours, VHS was extended to four.
According to Wasser, the increased length of the format made it more appealing to
consumers interested in recording long programming, particularly sporting events like
football games (73).
Time-shifting aside, the length of the cassette was also an issue for prerecorded
content early on. The one-hour length of the original Betamax was not well suited for
feature film recording. Even as tape lengths increased, the higher quality required of a
feature film also necessitated a higher data capacity, meaning that the longer cassettes—
which were partly made longer by slowing down the tape speed and decreasing the
quality of the image—were not necessarily always suitable for use with feature films.
That brief edge held by VHS’s superior record time was enough to push it into a more
dominant position with prerecorded content providers like feature film producers. Early
on, the makers of VHS, JVC and Matsushita, had focused on making such content
available by partnering with content license holders. By creating that initial edge, VHS
was able to hold on to its dominance. In the words of Wasser, “New purchasers would
naturally select the format that gave them the widest access to prerecorded tapes in
addition to time shifting. Because VHS was already the biggest, all new programs were
sure to be offered in that format, while only the companies that could afford additional
Betamax duplication would bother to do so” (Wasser 74-75). Betamax was thus beaten
by VHS’s superior length, and the comprehensiveness of its catalogue, as well as the
difference in price.
VCRs vs. Video Discs
The best-known video disc format is the laser disc, a collaboration between the
film studio MCA and the Dutch electronics firm Philips. Originally called DiscoVision
and later renamed Laservision, the system began development at the beginning of the
70s, but wasn’t released to the public until 1978. Initially, the laser disc system was
299
priced at $695, with discs available for between $6 to $16 (Wasser 64). This was around
$200 dollars less than the average price of an early VCR, and almost a quarter the cost of
a pre-recorded videocassette (See Figure 6). Since laser discs were developed in
partnership with a studio, they came with a guaranteed catalogue of titles. Other major
studios, reluctant to provide content under copyright for a playback and record system,
found the playback-only feature of laser discs more appealing.
Yet the catalogue was not quite large enough to counter two distinct drawbacks of
laser disc technology. First, because it was playback-only, the laser disc could not take
advantage of the consumer’s desire to time-shift. Time shifting was an important
component of consumer desire for home video, and as a result, the laser disc, as well as
other earlier playback-only systems, was doomed to fail without this dual functionality.
Second, the manufacturing process for the laser disc was not refined enough, and
produced “an excessively high rate of rejected discs” (Wasser 64), despite the generally
accepted notion that they were of better quality than either Betamax or VHS. The cost of
these failed discs had to be absorbed into the price of the successful discs, resulting in the
price increase to $25 per disc by 1979 (Wasser 64). Ultimately, laser discs were unable
to compete with the VCR based formats, and folded.
5
5
Though obviously the now dominant DVD format is related.
300
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